Becoming
by Arya's prayers
Summary: A jaded government agent is sent to deal with the actions of her rogue partner and discovers that some things are still worth fighting for. And that a life she never knew - thought left behind forever - may not be entirely beyond her reach. Canon-ish. Part XXXVII (Ch 95 & 96); "First Date". XXXVIII/Ch 97 to follow. (As much 'collection' as 'story'; TOC/Reader Guide in profile).
1. I: The Greater Good

000: Preamble

A nearly thousand-word preamble to a fan fic? Yes, just to set some expectations and allow people to manage their personal preferences.

I only discovered fan fiction after the show's finale and embraced it to help cope with the loss (thanks, writers/enablers!). The finale really stuck with me and - as I considered the entirety of the series and to my complete surprise - this happened.

I don't want anyone to _accidentally_ waste their time on something they _should_ know they will dislike (deliberately doing so is another matter entirely). And it _is_ going to be a pretty dense, lengthy read with some known hot buttons / potential objections. So please indulge this one-time lengthy preamble before investing your time. Or skip ahead to the break if you know that you simply don't care!

Warnings / Here's a few things you should know (or maybe just forgot)...

Events: Mostly for any new Chucksters (Welcome, Friends!), via NetFlix or otherwise, obviously expect extensive spoilers and in no predictable order. For all prospective readers, this is still fundamentally a canon retelling - after a fashion - and I know many have tired of that. Although it does bend some events, happenings, backstory and motivations and fills in some blanks to fit my headcanon. I initially set out to explore canon events throughout the series in the context of that headcanon so the train never really jumps the canon track - although it may adhere more to the scenario rather than strictly to the events. Still, it is rarely intended as any kind of 'fix it' fic.

Pace: Positively _GLACIAL_.

Tone: Fully embraces the admittedly stylized / unrealistic elements and darker themes present in canon and inherent in the spy genre that CHUCK heavily leverages. It therefore tends to be fairly angsty and deemphasizes the more whimsical elements that some prefer. This darker approach also includes a wide spectrum of approaches to _THE_ hot-button topic: seductions...

About 'that'...: I _AGONIZED_ over the decisions related to seductions. I don't want to feed any kinks (no offense if that's your thing but...nope) nor do I want anything to come off as Pollyannaish or disingenuous. I DO want to be true to the underlying genre (warts and all), to be consistent in tone and, therefore, to acknowledge its too-casual, repercussion-free yet prominent usage in canon - all of which made it impossible to ignore seductions completely - while also trying to avoid the portrayal of such things as something blithely accepted. No choice here was made lightly but this means some portions of that spectrum will be unpleasant.

Caveat Emptor: Some of these elements are mere annoyances to some readers (pace, certain canon events) but others are known hot buttons. I have been reluctant to share this story having seen readers take great offense on principle to some elements and wanted to provide ample opportunity and the necessary information for those readers to opt out.

I now consider those who have strong aversions to any of these aspects to be sufficiently informed to make their own decisions and, perhaps naïvely, rely on the prospective reader's self-awareness and their ability to manage their own consumption. Having provided ample warning, I will try to avoid cluttering things up in the future with any additional commentary on story choices or blanket rebuttals and instead let the story tell the story from here on out.

And with that, as the good Captain says, I wash my hands of this weirdness. ;)

Acknowledgements

Because I am a control freak and crazy nervous about sharing (see Exhibit A above) this is technically unbetaed but thanks to everyone who has been supportive or offered their opinions when this was still in its early formative stages.

Extra special thanks with a cherry on top to the brilliant, talented and extremely gracious Steampunk!Chuckster for going the extra mile and offering to bounce ideas around - and let it be known, I have thrown some seriously wack ideas at her from a multiverse of possibilities. If any part is irredeemably offensive (as opposed to uncomfortable-but-story-appropriate), it is likely because I didn't heed her advice enough. A thousand thank-yous, Agent V. You are the best!

Logistics

The lengths of most installments should be around the 9k - 12k range in their entirety. This will make frequent updates unsustainable but I will try to update regularly. Due to extreme variation in scene/what-could-have-been-chapter lengths, some installments (like this first one) are single chapter 'long takes' while others are multi-scene/multi-chapter. They will be labelled so you know which to expect.

It is a bit 'front-loaded' due to extremely rich and dense S1 source material and a prologue that tries to set some rules of the universe, clarify expectations by example and even provides some early reveals to help with both. The prologue will be six chapters (usually roughly synonymous with 'scenes') spanning the first four installments/parts (published 'chapters') before we even get to Burbank.

For those few intrepid adventurers among you not yet dissuaded, willing to take the bad with the good and willing to forgive my missteps as I try to achieve a difficult balance, with no more ado...and that was a LOT of ado...let's remix this business...

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs

The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership of or claim to the characters or story of the television show _Chuck_ (referred to hereafter as CHUCK) or the movie _Tron_ is asserted or implied in this or any subsequent part. No ownership of or claim to Charles Schulz's _Peanuts_ characters is asserted or implied.

* * *

Becoming

PROLOGUE

"Choices"

"I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it." - Charles Dickens

* * *

Part I (Prologue): The Greater Good...

...in which a government agent contemplates recent events, her role in them and the unsavory career that has led her to this time and place before making a difficult decision...

Canon Reference: Contained within flashback elements of Chuck vs. The Baby (episode 5.08)

Contents: One super-sized chapter (Ch 1); 11,800 words, breaks indicate suggested rest points as we begin to delve into many of the elements warned of in the preamble

* * *

001: The Greater Good and Other Lies

Budapest, Hungary;

Sun Sept 16, 2007 12:56 am

Nicole Schroeder sat rigidly upright at the foot of the bed of her darkened hotel room. Her ankles were crossed and hands folded in her lap as she breathed in and out slowly, smoothly and deeply through her nose. The beautiful, blonde woman's heavily shadowed eyes were softly closed as she listened to the rain clattering against her window punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning visible through her eyelids and the subsequent soft rumble of distant thunder. She was taking advantage of this overdue moment of relative quiet to contemplate the convoluted events of the last several weeks.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to steer those thoughts away from the more existential questions she feared to face about the endless cycle of lies and violence her life had become and instead focus on more immediate concerns. Those immediate concerns currently consisting of both the contents of the repurposed gun case resting near her pillow and how much she hated the three men she held responsible for her current situation.

She resented the very idea that she in any way required a handler after over nine years in the CIA and six as a very successful and eventually highly autonomous field operative. She may have understood the thought process that could lead to distrust of her allegiances given recent events but she still couldn't believe a conclusion had been made that she was suddenly somehow unreliable in some way.

Had she known that the decision was less about the actual probability that her loyalty to The Agency was in question and more about the extreme risk she posed as their most deadly agent she may have been slightly flattered but no less angry. She was simply too dangerous for her superiors to blindly assume she could still be trusted.

She wondered what it would take to remove this cloud of suspicion and for how much longer she would be under this additional scrutiny. Scrutiny brought about by the mysterious actions of the man she now wondered whether it might be more accurate to consider to be her _former_ partner.

If Bryce Larkin knew what was good for him he wouldn't show his face around her unless he had already cleared up the situation with their superiors. His sweet talk and roguish smile weren't going to cut it this time. If she were honest with herself, his Casanova act had lost some of its charm a long time ago but he had proven to be a hard habit to break.

They operated independently as often or more often than they worked as a tandem and it wasn't uncommon for either of them to disappear without warning when called away for a mission that didn't require the pair of them. But this was the first time she had been deployed under false orders, detained on arrival and interrogated at length about his suspicious actions and possible whereabouts. Now she knew _exactly_ what it looked like when one of those absences was unsanctioned. She had once trusted him with her life but was now starting to doubt that faith in him.

Bryce had earned some benefit of the doubt over their time together - at least with regard to her faith in him as a partner. So maybe her anger was a little bit misdirected. After all it was the man who had originally recruited her, the current Director of the CIA Langston Graham, who sent her on this assignment ten days ago.

The Director had simply said there was an AIC in Hungary who needed someone who could work efficiently and autonomously to deal with some local trouble. Her version of a smash and grab - infiltration and elimination of heavily armed opposition to retrieve a classified target. Her bread and butter. She could often achieve the same results with or without bloodshed - the difference usually came down to whether her presence could or was preferred to go unnoticed, whether survivors were needed for questioning or what sort of message needed to be sent. She was very, very good at sending messages.

She had objected to being put under the supervision of a handler again - especially since one of the explicit operative requirements was autonomy - but Graham had shut her down. He reminded her that although her identity was still classified and closely held, he was still dealing with the scrutiny of the other sixteen members of the Intelligence Community around his rogue agent and anyone associated with him. He told her this mission was just something he pulled off the top of the proverbial pile to keep her sharp until the apparent hornet's nest Bryce had kicked eventually calmed down.

Graham knew how antsy she got when she wasn't in the field and, frankly, he didn't like her to have too much time alone with her thoughts. And so he sent her. Not Sarah Walker.

Sarah Walker, by all accounts, was an administrative efficiency expert currently reviewing regional operations out of a small CIA post in Belgium who had suddenly been recalled to Langley for vague reasons involving administrative briefings and budgetary reviews. No one paid much attention to the comings and goings of Sarah Walker - and no one will have distinctly remembered seeing her in Virginia those days or not - but that's what her personnel file would say.

That sort of thing seemed to happen to Sarah Walker a lot.

The Director had instead sent Nicole Schroeder to Budapest. Yet another woman magically created out of thin air by the maestro Langston Graham to fill the vacuum created whenever Sarah Walker was absent from the world.

She had briefly been Laura Davis when she was processed out of the black site in South Africa where she had been interrogated for eight days. She had been handed a phone with one of Graham's staffers on the other end. Authentication protocols were exchanged before she received her orders, a small case full of mission gear and a packet containing her new credentials from an agent on site and she went on her way. _Just a typical day_ she remembered thinking at the time.

Three weeks and one relatively simple yet highly micromanaged intelligence gathering mission later she became Nicole Schroeder. Now she was thinking that maybe she should simply blame Graham for this entire fiasco - both for sending her here and for targeting her for recruitment in the first place nearly a decade ago.

As she always did, Nicole Schroeder had accepted her new identity without question. Slipped seamlessly into a different woman's fictional life playing her role to perfection...though she sometimes wished she had veto power over the names themselves. She couldn't prevent a mental image of a disproportionately large-headed cartoon character playing Für Elise on a toy piano whenever she introduced herself these last few days.

But while Bryce Larkin did deserve some of the blame for the nature of her recent assignments and Director Graham deserved a share for his part in selecting them, it was Kieran Ryker that was the object of most of her anger. He was the Agent in Charge for this op and the one who had sent her into that meat grinder alone last night.

The expectation of dealing out death and carnage itself didn't bother her at all - or at least bother her more than the nagging buzzing it had become in the back of her mind over the past couple of years. Death and carnage was her stock-in-trade for most of these last six years. At least when slipping in and out like a ghost in the night was not an option. It was the fact that she had been lied to from the start about what was actually going on that really pissed her off. That and the fact that Ryker had tried to kill her himself on a busy street yesterday afternoon.

Nicole inhaled deeply through her nose, opened her eyes and stood. She efficiently gathered a few items from her purse and from around the room. She then stepped out on her covered balcony and placed the metal trash bin on top of a folded wet towel just in case the bottom of the bin was even thinner than it seemed. Nicole Schroeder took her last breath as the woman who had donned her skin carefully and individually burned the last of the few scraps of paper that were the forged passport and other identifying credentials of a fabricated person. In mere moments, without pomp or ceremony, Nicole simply ceased to exist.

The now nameless woman wondered if she would ever go back to being Sarah Anderson. Or if she even wanted to. Sarah Anderson was still on administrative leave pending review. Current Location: Parts Unknown.

As she had watched Nicole burn, she wondered what Sarah Anderson's given name - or rather, _first_ name; they were all _given_ names - might have been if she and her most frequent partner for most of the last two years had not previously met and if he had not overheard what she no more considered her name than any other _nom du jour._

He had first known her as a 'Sarah' having bumped into Sarah Walker at Director Graham's Langley office. That name was not a cover identity per se. It had been assigned as a primary yet seldom utilized alias. A default setting. To Graham's point, he had to call her something. But 'Sarah' was no more her name than 'Nicole' or any of the others that had come before.

Her partner - and that was still how she thought of him despite her irritation with him - had foolishly introduced himself as Bryce rather than an approved alias. He had then eventually become Bryce Anderson more often than not when they were later assigned as frequent partners and had occasion to pose as a married couple. She had learned to live that cover just as she had the many before they met and the many others assumed on various missions since but it had been the most compelling of the bunch. Perhaps she had lived that one more fully than the others even as unwise as that may have been.

When she was assigned to solo missions - usually cleaning up some mess for Graham, often indirectly of his own creation - she adopted yet another new identity. But for nearly two years she had been a Sarah of one type of another more frequently and for longer durations than at any earlier point in her career. It was what Graham called her unless she was specifically operating under a different identity and Bryce had adopted the same habit. Yet she never thought of herself as 'Sarah'. She tried not to think of herself at all.

Bryce had gone off the grid entirely doing God knows what and she had been questioned for days about his whereabouts. It had been mild by her standards - just a little drug cocktail and your standard polygraph - no lasting damage and nothing she hadn't been trained to beat ten times out of ten, just repeated over multiple days. She wondered how much of a hand Graham had in limiting the intensity of her interrogation.

Lying and scheming were second nature to her long before she was enticed into joining the CIA. In the years before Graham had assigned her scores of identities, her father had given her dozens of his own devising. She guessed she had been more than two hundred different people over the course of her twenty-five years on the planet.

The CIA's spycraft and interrogation specialists taught her to school her physical reactions and hide her sometimes raging emotions more effectively than even she had thought possible. Snuff out her feelings, bury them somewhere deep down inside. In a place she couldn't bear to look anymore. Become unreadable. Show only what you wanted others to see. Her father would be so proud.

She was sure that her ineffective interrogators were convinced that she knew very little. Her story had the rare but convenient virtue of being the truth. She had told them truthfully that she had last seen Bryce when the two of them had been lounging in the living area of their shared two-bedroom suite - preferring such an arrangement or even more private spaces whenever the situation and covers allowed.

She left the common room where Bryce had been checking his email and retreated to the sanctum of her bedroom to take a shower and settle in for some quiet time before bed. Shortly after she rinsed her hair he knocked, apologized in his usual automatic and casually insincere way for breaking her rules about intruding in her personal space uninvited and casually announced through the bathroom door that he was running down to the corner for some snacks. He had even asked if she wanted anything.

It was an odd intrusion. Especially knowing as he did how serious she was about the privacy of her nighttime rituals. And even at the time it had ominously reminded her of some of her father's ice cream runs when she was a child. Not the joyful ones after a successful con job but rather the ones that unpredictably turned into absences stretching into days or sometimes weeks. She foolishly expected Bryce to pop back up even days later but that was the last time she had seen him or heard a word from him.

That was over two months ago.

When he had failed to return by the following morning she had tried to investigate the last thing he had been reading but the laptop - one that at least cosmetically was very different than hers - was completely useless as anything more than a paperweight. She had later learned that some components were actually melted. Some sort of aggressive malware was suspected but some of the laptop's components and the damage they had suffered were beyond anything the CIA techs had ever seen.

It was as though it had been designed to melt down but much more elegantly than the usual effective, but easily detectable, CIA tricks of miniature degaussers or small thermite charges. She had no idea where he had gotten that particular laptop - a point of surprising interest to her interrogators.

The only thing of any import - and so little of what he said outside of mission planning these days was of any import - that she could remember Bryce mentioning before he disappeared was that the CIA and NSA were working on something jointly that was going to change the espionage game. Something big. Their higher-ups were pleased that things were finally coming together after some early failures and the approaching anniversary of 9/11 was somehow considered a significant milestone for their efforts. This seemingly minor detail was the one thing she withheld from her interrogators.

She withheld that information for practice more than anything. Or possibly out of sheer boredom. Or perhaps because the anniversary itself roughly coincided with a dubious milestone of her own.

She had been in custody or on assignment for three of their five planned emergency meeting points and their Plan Z - a series of widespread rendezvous points in case either of them had to unexpectedly go dark - wouldn't be active for another three months. If she wanted direct answers she would probably have to wait until then. When Bryce had not showed up at their remaining two locations she began to wonder if she had misplaced her loyalty and should have revealed the minor point she had withheld.

She had not heard of anything unusual in the intelligence community or through any of her less conventional contacts to indicate that he had been up to anything causing any death or mayhem. That should have been reassuring but she knew Bryce - at least professionally. To his infinite amusement chaos tended to erupt in his wake wherever he went but The Agency always knew what he had been up to. They usually preferred her surgical precision but sometimes encouraged his tactics in order to conceal their intentions behind the pandemonium he usually created. But they had no tolerance for agents who disappeared entirely and this silent absence spoke volumes. Something was coming.

As she cast the ashes from the can out into the rain and wind and stepped back inside she said a silent goodbye to Sarah Anderson as well. Whatever Bryce was into - unless he had a vastly better explanation for his unauthorized improvisation than he had ever produced before - this was likely the end of him as an agent. Possibly the end of him altogether. And Sarah Anderson was likely just as dead as Nicole Schroeder.

* * *

The woman leaned with one foot crossed over the other and her tailbone and both palms against the edge of the vanity causing her shoulders to shrug slightly as she contemplated the gun case on her bed. What was she supposed to do now? Even if she decided to do so, disappearing was not an option. Maybe if Bryce hadn't vanished first she would have had a chance but now The Agency would assume the two of them were up to something together and they were clearly well beyond unhappy with just Bryce having gone rogue. She needed to stay the course and allay suspicion. Reestablish herself to buy some time to plan if she were ever to consider such a thing.

No one she had encountered in her time with The Agency was sentimental enough to assume they were something as sappy or impractical as two star-crossed lovers. Nor would they foolishly allow two of their top operatives to roam freely with unknown motivations. They would assume the worst - that they were conspiring in some diabolical scheme - and pull out all the stops to find her. If it were just herself, she could do it. Maybe. At least for a while.

But she thought about the person she was - the person she had become to survive this life. And about what needed to be done next - the commitment - the _longevity_ it would require. Any sane person would agree that she was clearly the wrong choice.

There were literally hundreds of reasons she was the wrong choice. She now knew that her experiences and role were somewhat atypical within the broader intelligence community. Director Graham had the full gamut of potential resources at his disposal. From a legion of conventional agents and support personnel churned out of The Farm on a regular basis to the utterly criminal. Con artists. Master thieves. Assassins. Seductresses. He either developed people filling those four roles internally as a subset of the conventional ranks - or somewhat less conventionally as she had been - or he occasionally contracted out the most distasteful aspects of their world to freelancers when the work required less finesse.

She he had originally thought she would have fallen on the more conventional end of the spectrum but instead now found herself regularly filling three of the four roles at the other extreme and occasionally dabbling in the fourth. She had once hoped to break away from the con game and become someone more respectable, yet she found those skills to be useful for even a conventional agent. It was both a disappointment and a relief - something she _knew_ she was good at - and her prowess had not gone unnoticed as The Agency invited her deeper down the rabbit hole.

The same went for pickpocketing - a skill she developed, expanded and enhanced to conduct heists from the most secure facilities in the world. She had to become a government agent to truly reach her full criminal potential.

She hadn't thought she was wired for either of the other two - the most extreme roles she might conceivably be asked to play. She had once thought that only sociopaths and jaded prostitutes would be willing to perform the extremes of those respective roles with absolutely no compunctions. She honestly couldn't say which was worse. Both were horrific and repulsive in their own special ways.

Now knowing for certain that such things were generally not asked of most conventional recruits - at least not as cavalierly as they were asked of Graham's 'specials' - didn't change the fact that she had reached the height of her profession long before coming to that realization. That ship had sailed long ago. She had almost unwittingly chosen one over the other and found she had a remarkable capacity for violence. And once you were among the killer elite it was difficult to justify utilizing you for anything else.

Her strike team experience was black and white combat - kill or be killed - and she was mostly able to come to terms with that. But her first assassination target had been something else entirely. Just a photo in a folder and an address. Not even a name. A woman labelled a traitor but with no proof provided. A mission completed almost by accident. The first of many.

She was usually more successful at preventing at least her waking mind from contemplating her own milestones - the ones that had come to define her - but Graham had predictably invoked 9/11 for a more self-serving reason when they last met.

What seemed like a lifetime ago, the agent had completed her lengthy and unorthodox training in 2001 just two days before the attacks on both towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a fourth plane downed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania after a revolt by its own passengers against their hijackers.

Hoping to reignite her zeal for her new profession after discovering some unexpected revelations during her training about the new life she had chosen, she had attended as an anonymous observer several days earlier when the former Director had delivered an impassioned speech to the incoming class of conventional CIA recruits - many of whom were intended for much less covert roles. As one of the handful of practical children then Deputy Director Graham had plucked out of questionable circumstances to be his chosen few, she had received a similar message behind closed doors. It was the only event that would mark what could be loosely termed her graduation.

Both messages were variations of the same bill of goods she had been sold when Graham had recruited her. Turn her back on a life of crime and serve her country. Live a life of adventure and excitement while serving a larger purpose.

Serve the Greater Good.

That hadn't been the only reason she had originally accepted Graham's offer but she had embraced it if for no other reason than to make her new reality more palatable. She had already seen enough by the end of her training to suspect it was almost completely bullshit. She would never admit it to him now but even on the day she walked out of the secret training facility and embarked upon what would be a remarkable but completely anonymous career she still had hope that she could redeem herself in some way for the sins of her youth and erase some debt on a cosmic balance sheet. Do more good than harm. She no longer clung to such hopes.

Just two days after the completion of her training and field tests, the attacks spurred a frenzy of activity of which Graham - ever the opportunist - took full advantage. The political pressure and media scrutiny drove demands for results that ensured that his new secret classes of operatives would avoid any close scrutiny. And his methods - which once would have been considered controversial - were ignored completely allowing him to produce results more quickly than expected and curry favor on The Hill for his eventual appointment to Director.

She and the rest of his less-conventional, recently minted covert agents - known only to her by a set of operational code names - were all thrown into the fires that consumed nearly one third of them in the first year. Scrambled to the four corners of the world in response to this newly prioritized threat. She herself, like many of her faceless colleagues, had been swept up in the ensuing national pride and briefly nursed new hopes of being in a position to do something about this terrorist threat that shocked a nation and left so many feeling frightened and helpless.

But eventually some distance made even these aspirations fade into the haze of any other mission. While she knew she had foiled many overt threats and thwarted many covert plots against the United States and her interests over these past six years, many other actions revolved around political influence and economic warfare - either defending her nation against such actions or committing them against rivals. Forwarding an agenda rather than protecting a nation. That was the least shocking difference between reality and her naïve expectations.

Too many other missions had focused on eliminating threats directly or by sowing discord between loosely aligned factions - usually by creating the impression that members of one had been killed by members of another - leaving no trace of her involvement in those deaths and letting them then betray and eliminate each other. She couldn't help but think that her role in any of these had left her deeper in the red far more often than not.

Nonetheless, given the coincidental timing of her finally - if more clandestinely than most - joining the ranks of The Agency's clandestine forces, it was not unusual for Graham to comment to her on the approaching anniversary.

It seemed the agent, in all her varied incarnations, had crossed a significant milestone in a solo mission just two weeks before Bryce vanished. With the sixth anniversary of both the attacks and of her secretive induction as an agent approaching, Graham had stopped in to share the news while she was in custody undergoing relentless questioning. Literally a captive audience for his recounting of events she had no interest in reliving.

He had questioned her to his own satisfaction and then assured her that she would soon be released. He said it was for appearances, to ensure no one accused him of preferential treatment or of being anything less than thorough, but she suspected it was lingering misplaced anger toward Bryce. He had apparently decided that this interrogation session at this non-existent facility was the time and place to merrily inform her of her updated confirmed kill count before leaving her there to dwell on it - bound by straps to a metal chair that was bolted to the floor and wired to a polygraph - for most of the next two days.

He had catalogued her actions that had brought that count to an impressive and grotesque 'nice round number' - if she had stopped there. It was the third time he had used that phrase in those six years. Then he catalogued the actions that exceeded that round number for a third time.

The first time had reminded her - reluctantly hopeful - of a repentance tale from Islamic teachings that she remembered from her cultural training and associated readings. The second, morbidly of the 'four times fifty' of Coleridge: "_the souls did from their bodies fly; they fled to bliss or woe_". Her only remaining hope was that none had fled to bliss and her greatest fear was that any had. There was really no acceptable number.

She couldn't even repeat the number itself though it was never far from her thoughts as she had no cleverness remaining for this third such milestone. What Graham saw as tally marks in their favor in the bloody crusade to defend his Greater Good she saw as soul-crushing debits on her balance sheet.

Ever since she had requested her assignments be limited to stealth, extraction and elimination Graham had kept her informed of the body count she had left in her wake. She had been careful to phrase her request in terms of all the things she could still do for him rather than the thing she feared. The possible consequences of being found out while at such a tactical disadvantage represented an unacceptable risk. She had no desire to put herself in a situation that forced her to consider the full range of possible actions ever again despite her training - except possibly in the most impossibly dire of circumstances. She had learned quickly that _Never_ was a dangerous promise to make to oneself but she struck a bargain with Graham to vastly improve her chances.

She had never been comfortable in the role of seductress. She had the benefit of an unconventional upbringing where she had learned to talk her way out of almost any situation. She could convincingly play any role not just a vampish temptress. And when such an approach was judged to be the most effective and likely to succeed, when there was time to plan, the plan almost always included sufficient backup and contingencies to avoid the worst possible outcomes.

When seduction was part of the primary plan, it was never explicitly expected that she even approach repulsive extremes; the full-blown variety she had feared since her formal spy training. When some degree of seduction was involved it was usually a simple distraction or a bait-and-tranq to facilitate intelligence gathering. She had come to find as much amusement in the moment when she betrayed an evil man who she had led on as she found disgust at doing it. Perhaps even a bit more.

But her newly discovered beauty had proven to be a burden when she fit the need for the most obvious of roles and entered into the most dangerous game a female agent could play more often than she had expected. Not every situation allowed for robust planning and not every plan went as expected.

She had witnessed the aftermath far too many times when other female agents had wormed their way into the confidence of extremely unsavory, dangerous and unpredictable men only to make a fatal misstep or to be betrayed by circumstances. Some had survived and wished they hadn't and she was sure the ones who hadn't wished they had. She had seen one fellow agent come out the other side of a horribly overplayed hand changed forever.

Survival didn't necessarily have to mean demeaning yourself by blithely accepting the worst possible outcomes of the game they were playing but it was a careful balancing act with much at stake. It was uncommon but not unheard of for an agent to choose a path that ensured their survival at great personal cost. She didn't know or ever want to find out what they had to do to cope with such situations.

Director Graham heavily utilized conventional agents but also ignored every unwritten rule in favor of results. He had operatives like herself - one-agent wrecking crews - and several other even _less_ conventional resources at his disposal. She had occasionally crossed paths with some of Graham's people who were barely trained and considered lesser resources. So-called Valentine operatives - one of many demeaning terms. Agents in the technical sense only posing as the companions of their targets to gain access and track their movements and interactions. Solely intended as infiltrators but based on what little she knew of them they were not quite as lascivious as male agents often portrayed them.

One had told her that The Director had saved her life and that there were far worse existences. That particular philosophy didn't mesh with her own but she had later acknowledged that these women were survivors in their own way - more resourceful than she had expected with their own avoidance techniques when dealing with their marks and their own coping mechanisms when those techniques failed - even though their reputations carried over to the few full-fledged female field operatives like herself in a simplistic male agent's view of the female agent.

But even those other agents didn't have her array of skills. In a no-win situation she found that she could change the game. And that was how she discovered what she sardonically regarded as her hidden talent.

More often in her early missions - in situations where another agent might consider herself trapped - she had talked her way out or otherwise achieved her objectives through stealth. Graham was unimpressed. He said he could have farmed out that kind of work and called her lucky. A glorified grifter and a waste of her extensive training.

One particularly nasty situation led to something of a habit of escalating with violence to end the charade early, earning her a certain dubious reputation that was thankfully contained within one of many, many code names. That first time, her support team had been unable to implement their planned extraction and her mark had been far more aggressive than she had anticipated. With no small degree of luck, her particularly bloody alternative solution born out of desperation had still allowed her to achieve her objectives. And had gotten Graham's attention.

She logically understood the merits of using every tool at your disposal and tried her best to overcome her revulsion, eventually becoming more artful with her deceptions and more judicious with her wrath. The worst were the overnighters - a Virgin Mary some juvenile, provocative yahoo had nicknamed them. Not after the Holy Mother, of course, but rather the non-alcoholic drink. All of the window dressing, none of the hard stuff. Only employed on less wary, less dangerous marks in scenarios requiring no recurring contact.

She could win the interest of nearly any man and had been trained and equipped - relying heavily on knockout drugs with euphoric side effects and other somewhat revolting tricks with convincing effects - to create the impression they had been intimate with one another the night before then artfully excusing herself from any follow-up activities the next morning. Most men suited for such an approach were simply fools, petty criminals or pretenders. Rarely aware of the full significance of their actions. She was aware that she was betraying _them_ with her manipulations - deceiving them into believing she was something she was not - and so she seldom felt the need to wield the full force of her wrath against them.

But she drew the line there and refused to entertain the thought of overstaying her cover and having to resort to even more convincing acts to maintain that cover or her mark's interest. She would die before she allowed herself to be used that way.

Or someone else would. Not all marks were so easily fooled or manipulated and some had to be dealt with harshly and decisively. She had been trained to recognize the signs and determine when a situation was and was not salvageable - and she had been trained at the knee of a pretty good con man to read people long before that - but many of the decisions were all preordained.

She had realized early on that no matter how seemingly mild your intentions, once you set foot into such a role the downward slope was incredibly slippery. If things went well and you suffered through being kissed or pawed at by someone you despised while pretending to be an enthusiastic participant perhaps you could achieve your objectives without sacrificing too much. Without betraying yourself or what few ideals you still clung to. Without revealing your true intentions or your deceptions. Without suffering the consequences of revealing either.

If things went poorly and all best laid plans failed the options no one wanted to talk about still included the worst. Playing out the cover to avoid suspicion. A repulsive choice she had thankfully managed to avoid that was still preferable to almost certain death. Or so she had been told - a theoretical choice she suspected had more to do with the value of Agency resources and wasn't entirely convinced she agreed with. She had occasionally considered that, if she completely lost control of a situation and there were no other options, she would give them no choice but to kill her rather than become their plaything before they killed her anyway.

After six years she still felt more appreciation than outrage for the man who had laid it all out for her simply because he had been brutally honest with her. He described the dangerous situations she may find herself in, what may be required to survive them and deliberately shattered the last of her naïveté for her own good. She was in too deep by then and he had pulled back the curtain on what alternatives - unlikely but conceivably - could be required of her and what she had to be prepared to do - how convincing she might have to be - if for no other reason that to make it out the other side alive. And she was a survivor.

Always a survivor.

Looking back on every situation where she had begun her deception with a wink or a sultry look - knowing full well where the chain she had started could lead if absolutely nothing went right - only made her feel as though they had all ended in the revolting way that every true operative secretly feared.

She had quickly come to realize that calling any of it a choice of any kind was lying to herself. Eventually, her luck was going to run out. Even with all the backup in the world and the best planning you could hope to have, it was a roll of a die. One she had rolled enough and no longer wanted to gamble herself on.

So, highly trained, having demonstrated her proficiency in combat and having seen too much of the fate she didn't want for herself, she decided it was something she no longer wanted to risk to chance. After initially brushing off the suggestion, Graham surprisingly conceded to her well reasoned argument that she was even better suited to other uses.

She still felt incredibly unclean when such things invaded her thoughts. Both for what she had even, purely as a tactical option, considered doing to survive on a few unfortunate occasions and for what she had traded to - not necessarily prevent - but merely improve her chances of never having to do it.

She had never really considered that she was effectively offering to become Graham's personal fixer. At the time, eliminations seemed to be just as extreme of a concept as what could have happened on those few missions that had nearly fallen apart at the seams completely and required far too much of her. It wasn't as though she hadn't had to kill numerous times over the course of many other missions - been forced into it really by the nature of her service - and she reasoned that at least it didn't require as much of a sacrifice of her soul. After all, if you found yourself looking down the barrel of a gun in her hand or with the blade of her knife under your ear you probably knew what you did to bring her there.

From the beginning, it had seemed to be the lesser of two evils. Of the two, she thought she would eventually become more desensitized but she couldn't have been more wrong. She had just never considered that Graham would utilize her quite so liberally. She had gotten exactly what she asked for and traded one horror for another. And she was so successful at it that she had effectively made Graham's career.

Those with any degree of knowledge of his reputation, from enemies of the state to members of his own Agency or the broader Intelligence Community, came to fear him and his seemingly inescapable reach.

They especially feared the ghost that was his so-called 'enforcer'.

Even so, Graham had not been pleased that one of his few surviving protégés from his days as Deputy Director had become more and more reluctant to allow anything more than a wink and a kiss or occasionally to demean herself by allowing some heavy petting or some other humiliation she would later repay in the course of completing her assigned objective. But he had agreed to her request and reaped all of the unexpected benefits.

She still utilized her beauty, sex appeal and enticement skills. Frequently to set up a kill. Often to quickly gain access to secured areas or other objectives by exploiting foolish men. Only occasionally going as far as a Virgin Mary to leave no indication of her duplicity. Even without going as far as she once feared, she had eventually reached a point where she could barely tolerate a mark touching her. In what passed for her personal life, she was far too concerned with losing her professional credibility to pursue relationships with fellow agents.

When she indulged her need for human contact, her few attempts at relationships outside the intelligence community were doomed to be nothing more than brief trysts due to the nature of her work - adopting disposable identities, her reluctance to trust and her awareness of the blood on her hands. Not to mention the smaller betrayals sometimes required of her while on _those_ types of missions. Short of what other agents may have had to do at one time or another but betrayals nonetheless. She had thought there was no one who could possibly understand the sacrifices she had made. The things she had done. And there had been no one she allowed to remain around her for any significant period of time. Not until Bryce.

She wasn't sure if Graham kept her updated on the number of lives she had extinguished as a show of pride and support of her in her most notable and notorious area of specialty or to somehow punish her for not fully embracing her role as some unvoiced vision of the ideal female agent.

Either way, she didn't need reminding. She knew the number. And she knew their faces. And most of their names. She had added the eleven on the way in and eight more on the way out just over twenty-four hours ago. There had been too many missions like that over the years. So few missions were a simple in-and-out or a glorified con job. She usually got the dirtiest, bloodiest assignments, executed them in the brutally fierce manner that was her calling card and the bodies had piled up quickly.

She had once done the math. It was similar to the example of earning a penny on the first day of a month and doubling it every day. It sneaks up on you, closes fast and overtakes you completely in the blink of an eye.

After the first ten days of doubling your penny, your earnings increased from a single cent to a vastly improved but still modest five dollars a day. After twenty days it ballooned to five thousand. By the end of one short month your wage would be five million dollars. Per day.

Her burden was similar - but like so many things in her life upside-down and backwards. Decreasing instead of increasing. Dividing instead of multiplying. Destroying instead of building. If every kill had cut her soul in half, as it had felt after the first one, what was left of it was now infinitesimally small.

Divide by two enough times and you close on zero unbelievably fast. If you're feeling generous, divide by something less than two as many times as she had and you didn't fare much better. What little was left was questionable in its significance - even if she limited herself to Graham's preferred count of only her direct kills rather than every casualty on every mission. She wondered every time she got even closer to zero just how close she was to simply blinking out of existence.

* * *

Ryker should have raised the count by one and put her one step closer to oblivion but she had missed her opportunity and only managed to wound him. She stood to her full height and let her bare feet carry her back to the sliding glass door. She gazed straight through her faint reflection there - through the ghost in the glass - at the thunderstorm raging outside and fumed as she recalled how he set her up to do the wet-work for his little money grab and tried to dispose of her afterward.

Never mind what a cocked up plan it was in the first place. There were no terms of inheritance. The vast sum of money had simply been transferred to a secure account at a private bank and the only people who could currently access it without assistance lay dead on the floor of their palatial dining room.

She had hunted down Ryker's tech guy - a scrawny, twitchy little hacker type who liked to call himself Spider and spout unoriginal nonsense proclaiming himself the master of the web. Spider didn't realize how close _he_ came to increasing the count by one.

She despised hackers - always hiding behind their computer screens and their clever little self-created nicknames. So self-important yet never really putting themselves at risk. He was more fortunate than he would ever realize to currently be cuffed to a radiator with a broken knee cap and several broken fingers. Probably sitting in his own filth by now. She would call it in once she was clear of the city and have him brought in to corroborate Ryker's rogue action. Or Ryker would find him first and tie up the loose ends for her.

She had considered eliminating him herself but realized Spider didn't know any more about her than Ryker did and so she left him to his fate. It didn't matter to her either way. Killing him quickly didn't improve her situation at all and she was sure he wouldn't appreciate her mercy if Ryker was the one who found him. Her vague amusement at the idea of what would happen to him if Ryker found him alive with no information of value to offer may have been why she left him alive.

She focused her eyes on her reflection in the glass of the door rather than the tempest raging within her shadowy image and her mirror-self seemed to judge her for such a casual dismissal of yet another human life. But he was as complicit in all this as Ryker and didn't warrant another thought from her now that he had revealed all she needed to know - that Ryker had known everything from the start.

Ryker had played both sides against each other and tried to use his own agency to take advantage of it. Convinced the banker to move _all_ of the funds to his own in exchange for false promises of protection and to temporarily mask his involvement. Convinced the bad guys that their money man was betraying them with predictable results while gathering everyone who could point back to him in one place. And worst of all, convinced both her and Graham that this was a legitimate op with a completely fabricated target requiring a minimally proficient agent. Ryker kept up the charade while she independently confirmed his falsified reports and unnecessarily tracked the movements of the key players. All he really wanted was muscle to go in and soften up the opposition.

The one thing Ryker could not have anticipated was that due to the current lack of confidence in her by her superiors she would be a part of that pool of potential agents who fit the required mission parameters. Loners. Killers. Ghosts. Ryker had wanted one of The Agency's disposable assassins but coupled with Graham's desire to get her back in the game, he got her. As far as Ryker had been concerned she was completely expendable and had not been expected to survive. He clearly had no idea who he was dealing with.

Spider now knew exactly who - or at least _what_ \- he was dealing with. It hadn't taken long for him to break, his initial bravado crumbling under the sheer intensity of her restrained fury. All she initially asked for was his name. Just a name and the pain could stop. Break the persona and break the man. She had quickly learned that his real name was Norman and shortly thereafter he had told her everything.

He told a sputtering, sobbing story about stumbling onto the inconsistencies in the banker's finances and, after digging deeper, determining that he had been stealing from multiple clients for years and funneling the proceeds to a secure account. An account at a private bank that required the physical presence of an account holder and a fingerprint match - of even the tiniest fingers - to access the account.

The banker had thought those precautions would give him some measure of protection but his most dangerous clients had killed him and his wife not realizing any of this. Or realizing that prior to their visit the banker had completely emptied their accounts into his own at Ryker's direction in exchange for promises of protection that never came.

When she had defied expectations and survived her initial onslaught, Ryker made a tactical error that ultimately revealed his true intentions. She had planned on slipping out once she retrieved her objective but the nature of the package prevented that. He _should_ have immediately sent her to engage the reinforcements - the outer guards she had earlier evaded to maintain her strategic advantage over the more concentrated group - that she later had to fight through on her way out anyway. Then he could have concocted a story to cover his tracks, sent her on her way _if_ she had survived and gone in himself after the smoke had cleared.

Maybe he had panicked not knowing whether anyone else knew as much as he did. Or maybe he was just too big of a chicken-shit to face any remaining opposition himself. Either way, he had opted to direct her to retrieve what he deemed 'the package' - the last surviving person capable of accessing the account and Ryker's true target.

That third person was barely three months old and would have to wait nearly eighteen years to independently access the funds. The agent was still unclear exactly what he had expected to do next. Keep the girl in isolation for the next eighteen years and eventually manipulate her into accessing the funds? Lop off those tiny fingers or otherwise lift her prints and try to manipulate the records, size differential and any number of other security obstacles to pass himself off as an authorized account holder? Pose as a guardian? Forge some sort of power of attorney?

Norman was unclear on those details but some combination of the last two or something similar were probably part of the plan and she found she was uninterested in the details. The agent smiled wickedly at the thought that she had made those plans, whatever they were, irrelevant. Neither the Hungarian mafia nor the rogue agent would be getting their hands on any of that money. Or on the little girl.

* * *

So the agent took stock of her current situation as a particularly violent thunderclap shook the building: she had been saddled with a handler for the first time in over four years because of the uncertainty around any involvement she may have in whatever Bryce was doing. She had been sent on a suicide mission into a farcical, impromptu dinner party for the leadership of half the Budapest underworld apparently celebrating the murder of their financier and his wife. And the handler she hadn't wanted to deal with in the first place had tried to kill her. At least her life couldn't possibly get any more complicated given her most immediate concern.

Her most immediate concern, and the biggest reason by far that she directed the vast majority of her hatred toward Kieran Ryker, was the now relentlessly screaming bundle haphazardly swaddled and resting in her gun case turned makeshift bassinet.

She had given a lady down the hall eight, brown 2000 forint notes to watch the baby for four hours while she gathered the information she needed to determine why they were after the baby in the first place. She would have paid ten times that but it wouldn't have meshed with her hastily concocted cover story of a desperate mother needing to go to a job interview.

She had paid Norman a less-than-friendly visit, confronted Ryker to confirm the story, failed to kill or apprehend him and then while contemplating her next step - as she began to make her way back to the hotel with no specific mission objective left to achieve - she had stopped in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk as she suddenly realized that her entire life was at a crossroads.

She stood stunned by the revelation - and her shame at the fact that she could even entertain the thought - as fellow pedestrians sidestepped to avoid her like a stream breaking around a stone in it's path. There was absolutely no legitimate government interest served by her returning to the hotel to collect the baby from the complete stranger she had given the equivalent of less than a hundred dollars in Hungarian currency, a few disposable diapers and a single bottle of ready made formula.

She had no real need to go back to that hotel at all. She rationalized for a moment that since Ryker had not already come looking for her at the hotel he must not know she was staying there. So surely it would only further endanger the baby if she _were_ being followed and chose to return there now.

But she was sure she wasn't being followed. As good a liar as she was, she couldn't lie to herself. Not about this.

There was no magnanimous justification for running away that she could convince herself was true but the smart play was still the simplest. She had backup credentials and half her mission bankroll hidden in a locker at a nearby train station. She could be out of Budapest inside the hour. There was no valid tactical reason to go back to the hotel.

None at all.

None except to be absolutely certain the child would be safe. To see to it personally. She had no reason to worry about such things - her mission here was over - she had not yet reported Ryker's betrayal and he was still hunting her. The smart thing for a survivor like her to do was to disengage and withdraw. To walk away.

Yet here she was now, standing in near pitch black darkness staring at a wailing baby lying in a gun case.

Unwelcome and completely unexpected thoughts about the horrific but unlikely things a stranger could have done with a baby had sent her rushing back to the hotel as fast as she could without drawing unwanted attention. The woman she had chosen solely out of convenience to watch the baby girl had chuckled at her disheveled appearance and the obvious relief that was, surprisingly, entirely unnecessary to fake.

She felt no ill will toward the child herself. In fact, she tried frantically for the next hour and a half to attend to her every need but had no idea what she was doing. The baby girl had finally slept for nearly two hours but the thunder had woken her again and now she was inconsolable. Diapers had been changed and a bottle of formula drained. The agent was at a loss for what else she might need.

It had been so long since she had seen anything good and pure that it scared the hell out of her. She had just killed nineteen men and tortured and seriously injured another. Now she was trying desperately to keep a tiny baby alive. The Greater Good for which she had been fighting what seemed like every waking hour these past six years had always been a complete abstraction. So much so that she had begun to wonder whether there was such a thing. Was this little girl really worth saving? She could become anything. She could become a doctor. Or a teacher. A force for good in the world.

The murdered banker and his wife would have provided the little girl a life of comfort. And where would that path have taken her? A life of privilege would have given her every opportunity but also exposed her to every vice. The baby girl's parents had foolishly involved themselves in a world they didn't fully understand, why would their daughter make any better decisions? Given a life surrounded by ill-gotten opulence would this little child have been able to make the right decisions or would she become entitled and cruel?

But what would happen if the agent - or the woman she had considered abandoning the baby in the care of - had simply decided to drop the child off in a local orphanage? Adoption into a happy home? Possibly. A perfect storm of luck that led to a happy future? Unlikely. Even less so in this less than hospitable area. A lifetime in an institution somehow resulting in a successful, happy adulthood? Conceivable - but only if she ignored every wicked thing she knew of the world. A too-short life of some combination of poverty, crime, addiction or prostitution? Far more likely.

She briefly wondered if she had done the girl any favors by saving her life. Circumstances clearly weren't enough to ensure a happy future. Starting your life in even the most loving of environments guaranteed nothing.

She needed to look no further than her own childhood to prove that. The chain of events beginning with the agent's own choice at the age of seven to follow her father's path instead of staying in the loving home that her mother would have provided had set her on a bloody path that brought them together all these years later.

The agent morbidly thought that if the little girl was extremely fortunate and made the perfect decisions at the perfect times she too could avoid a life as a con artist and still live a life of lies and thievery. Avoid being labelled a criminal yet live a life of crime. Avoid the brothels and still become a reluctant temptress, with the possibly of worse on a really bad day. Dare to hope to change the world and instead do so by becoming one of the world's elite among killers. Just like her.

But at that moment the baby girl briefly stopped crying with a little snuffle and just stared back at her. She hesitated to touch the tiny, perfect creature afraid that she would taint her in some way. She looked into her eyes and wondered at the possibility that at a time predating her earliest memory she might have once been that innocent.

The corners of her mouth turned up and she laughed silently to herself - she never laughed out loud anymore - as she conjured up the image of herself as a modern day Diogenes but with an even more ambitious quest. Searching for a good person rather than the already impossible goal of seeking a merely honest one. Of course this little baby seemed like the embodiment of goodness. She had seen nothing of the world. She wasn't even aware that her parents had been murdered mere hours ago.

How much more did the late Nicole Schroeder have to see to finally admit to herself that the cause she had sold her soul to champion was a falsehood? That a suspicion she had long feared was true; that the Greater Good was a lie? Or at least it was almost never whatever the CIA declared it to be.

She had thought she saved lives by stopping arms trafficking only to realize those arms were then redirected to fuel some conflict that better influenced a more desirable political environment somewhere else in the world. Just as many bullets found just as many uses and turned just as many people into just as many corpses.

She had helped dismantle rebel factions - whose overall aims she could find some sympathy with but whose brutal methods she could not - because they opposed the aims of her government. She had assisted other practically identical and equally vicious groups because they aligned with those aims.

Whether she ever took the time to process if she personally agreed with any of the decisions or not, they were driven by a political agenda and might made right. It wasn't for the Greater Good but for the marginal benefit of a specific group far away from the killing fields. Within the borders she left behind, who could say whether more or fewer lives were lost or ruined based on her actions?

There were many such examples and it was rarely as simple as killing a madman with his finger on a button - killing one to save thousands. More often the mission consisted of retrieving or obtaining information or some specific thing by any means necessary for an unknown or non-specific future purpose. Or simply eliminating people who stood in the way of some vaguely defined agenda that could change like the wind.

A few black-and-white missions had come her way over the years and were definitely the most fulfilling. But was it worth the many charcoal grey things she had done with more ambiguous motives to ultimately position herself to do such things? Would she ever find a worthy cause that was clearly the right place to make her stand?

Such questions were considered to be ill-advised and well above her pay grade; deemed to be counter-productive and beyond the understanding of a cog in the clandestine war machine. And she was trapped in this mad world. Disobedience was treason and her masters had many ways to encourage compliance.

So, like many others in her profession, for years she had shielded herself from her own conscience by wandering further and further away from questioning the justness of her assigned directives. Embracing the excitement and adventure of near-death experiences and choosing willful blindness too often in the name of self-preservation and some semblance of sanity. In for a penny, in for a pound and the more lost her true self became the more easy the compromises became.

Clear opportunities to do something right and just were rare. To sacrifice only of herself without bringing suffering to others in order to help someone else. But no one was so unselfish. She herself was certainly no martyr.

Everyone was corrupted in some way and, when there was any risk to themselves, thought only of themselves. Maybe she would reconsider if she ever met someone who had lived long enough to face the evils of the world and had not turned from the light in some way. Maybe, like that of Diogenes, such a search would simply be a derisive commentary on the futility of the search. Just another bad joke.

But she could do this one thing - save this one small person who was the only indication she had seen in nine long years that the concept of a Greater Good might not be entirely a fiction created to rally dangerous, thrill-seeking people like herself to do the bidding of the US government.

Despite the horrific things her government had demanded of her - and despite her own need for excitement and adventure that had mostly run out of steam but had allowed her to convince herself for a long time that such things were necessary evils - she still clung to some hope that at the core of it all her duty to her country still held some inherent importance. That she had done _some_ good despite her methods. She was the best in the world at what she did and had no idea what else she could ever be. So she clung desperately to the hope that at least some of the ends justified her vicious means.

Her own account may be beyond reckoning but perhaps some good was done along the way. Otherwise her entire adult life was a complete waste. And so she would keep lying to herself - telling herself that she had made the right choices, that the ends could justify the means, that she hadn't sold her soul for nothing and that she could use her prodigious if unsavory skill set to make a positive change in the world.

That she was a good person.

That lingering sense of duty - of purpose - whether it was illusion or not was all she had left. No matter what she had once hoped to achieve, this was all she was now. Just a spy.

But if the Greater Good was a complete lie why did she feel as though she was standing here looking it in the eye? Maybe she had cast her net too wide; set her expectations too high. She had never believed in fate, opting to believe that each person chose their own path. Wrote their own story. Was responsible for the choices that made them who they were. But maybe she herself wasn't the one who deserved saving. Maybe all her past misdeeds had been to position her for this one foolish act. Could all her wicked deeds be justified because the end result was positioning her to save this baby girl?

Maybe the Greater Good didn't exist or it was just so far beyond her reach that she could never truly be a part of it again. If she had helped to build a better world she had forfeited her right to be a part of it in doing so. But that didn't mean there wasn't any goodness in the world.

* * *

The baby had begun to cry again and everything she tried to soothe her was futile. So, as much as she hated to do it, the agent's thoughts turned to the one person in the world she knew would and could help with her current predicament. The one person whose scrutiny she had never wanted to face and who certainly didn't deserve to be drawn into her dangerous world.

She had left a few incredibly brief, often incomplete and occasionally completely incoherent voicemail messages over the past few years. She always made a point of deliberately calling the woman's house phone when she knew with absolute certainty she was not home. Sometimes she called just to hear the still familiar voice on the recorded greeting.

She almost always called from a phone forwarded to a number she kept solely for voicemail service. A number only two other people knew. The fact that Bryce was not one of the two was one of many an irritating flaws that had not been enough to make her face the nature of their relationship until now.

Four long years ago she had made the mistake of calling with a recently acquired burner phone and leaving a few seconds of dead air on the machine without blocking the call display. The number had still been forwarded to her voicemail account. It was an uncharacteristic mistake.

But that was another lie. It was no mistake at all. She had been hoping that exactly what happened next would happen. A return call. She had watched with the phone clutched in both hands and gasped as the number she had memorized appeared on the display while the phone rang the requisite number of times. She shuddered with relief as she dialed the forwarded account after anxiously waiting several minutes after the ringing had stopped and heard the automated voice tell her there was one new message on her voicemail.

A message that had bought her to tears as she listened to it at least a dozen times before destroying the now effectively useless phone and SIM card and allowing herself a moment to mourn a lost life. A message she had never deleted and still listened to occasionally over the past few years. The last time she had listened had been just before doing what she did best at the direction of someone she now knew to be a rogue agent. As she tried to make a decision she had been considering since her revelation on the streets of Budapest, she indulged herself by listening to it once more.

_Hey, honey. I haven't heard from you for a while. I miss you. Wherever you are, I hope you're okay. Safe. I want you to know, if you ever feel like you need a place to come home to...well, you have one._

She liked that message.

_Heard from you in a while_ referred to a dead air voicemail a few months prior. But the woman had always been patient. She obviously knew who was making these prank calls but there was nothing accusatory in her message. It was as though the two of them spoke regularly but their calls had simply been missing each other recently.

The agent often abandoned herself to that fantasy when she listened to the message - pretending that it was exactly the case rather than the reality that they hadn't seen each other in nearly twenty years. Just the hope that she could one day be forgiven for all she had done and be so welcome and loved somewhere was comforting despite the fact that it would never happen.

She had sought her out shortly after she completed her first major rotation abroad and and was surprised to find her living in San Diego as she herself once had. Probably _because_ she herself once had before contact was severed completely. She had considered trying to reconnect a few times since. To see if she could possibly be forgiven for what she had done all those years ago. Or to at least let her know that she was OK.

Which was, of course, yet another lie. She was pretty fucking far from OK in so many ways. And there were unforgivable mistakes and a whole childhood of lost time between them that she could never make up for. But maybe this was the person who could guide this baby girl and help her walk the tightrope she herself had fallen from long ago. Help her take the path that she herself had not. The safe home that had been offered to her could be given to someone far more deserving.

And so she dialed the number from memory, listened to three rings, swallowed a lump in her throat and ignored the burning in her eyes before responding as, for the first time, something other than the answering machine answered the call.

"Hi Mom...It's me."

* * *

END OF LINE


	2. II: Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond

...in which a government agent finds it necessary to sever her last remaining tie to the life she left behind and a retrospective view of her extensive training experiences following her recruitment...

Canon Reference: flashback elements of 'The Baby' (episode 5.08, concurrent with as yet unrelated early events of 'Intersect' aka the Pilot, episode 1.01) and non-canon pre-series origin elements

Contents: Double-feature! Two chapters (Ch 2 &amp; 3); one medium-length and one long (presented in several sections), 5,250 and 8,250 words, respectively - 13.5K of story, the rest is rambling; claim your favorite comfy chair, plan your reading, snacks and beverages accordingly and read one today and one next Monday if you prefer! I deemed Ch 2 too short (at a mere 5K) to leave it hanging between the behemoth of Ch 1 and the merely bordering on extra large Ch 3 - and I want to wrap up the prologue ASAP so we can get to Burbank...don't you? (two more prologue installments after this one)

A/N: I am overwhelmed by the good feelings from reviews, PMs and follows. Its, like, a quart of lutefisk worth of good feelings! Which I am assured is no small thing. It was somewhat of a relief to publish Ch 1 - now I can stop futzing with it. But I like to think it got better - if longer - with each revision and no chapter (in human history! - perhaps not, but definitely in this story) went through as many revisions as that beast. So maybe it's all downhill from here? Thank you all and I hope you find this installment as interesting as the first. I also hope everyone had a pleasant Mother's Day. With that in mind, the title of Ch 2 and its timing are - as they say - purely coincidental. (Additional story notes for Ch 1 - 3 at the end.)

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership or claim is asserted or implied to the characters or story of the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ in this or any subsequent part; additionally in this part no ownership or claim to any Warner Bros. Looney Tunes characters, _Grosse Point Blank_ (a reader pointed out at least a conceptual parallel with the 'shakubuku' / baby scene from GPB in the last chapter as well, Thanks MVK!), _MacGyver_, _Serenity_, _The Princess Bride_ (reaaaally obscure, novel-specific reference), Metallica's _Wherever I May Roam_ (for really no more than four synonyms in a particular order) or _Frozen_ (within these introductory comments) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part II: Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond

* * *

.

002: Mothers and Daughters

San Diego, CA; Wed Sept 19, 2007; 11:46 am

.

The agent looked at the small, quaint house from the driver's seat of her sports coupe. At a home she had driven by so many times before but never dared stop at. At a front door she hadn't been sure she would ever walk through and had now resigned herself to the fact that she likely never would. At the fleeting shadows of a life she had left behind. Those hopes belonged to someone else now.

She rounded the car to the passenger door and extracted the baby and the car seat that held her from where they were wedged less than ideally into the passenger seat. She grabbed the duffle bag full of the essentials her mother had advised her to get and the other items she had been gifted for the baby from the rear floorboard and suddenly there she was. Standing on the front porch with her right hand clutched to her chest and her left grasping the railing was the woman she hadn't seen since she was seven years old. Since the night she had chosen adventure - a life on the run with her father - over a real childhood with her mother. Her mother had aged, of course, but was every bit as beautiful as she remembered.

Emma Carter stood rooted to the top step as though stepping down into the dreamworld in front of her would cause her to wake. She watched as her daughter directed a tight-lipped smile at her, rounded to the driveway and made her way up the sidewalk unwilling to test her footing on the front lawn given her precious burden.

She pictured her precocious little girl as she remembered her - with her blonde hair in pigtails, wearing Mary Janes with knee high socks. A version of her daughter existing only in Emma's memory who was not cradling a baby but rather two or three new prizes from the public library - ridiculously above her expected reading level - clutched in her tiny arms.

She tried to reconcile her with the statuesque blonde dressed all in black. A dissonant image of flowing blonde hair, a fitted leather jacket and impossible stiletto boots juxtaposed with a car carrier with its handle in the crook of her right arm and a pink bundle inside. A time-lapse avalanche in her mind attempted to fill in the gaps - imaginary images of all the versions of her daughter that had been lost to time.

She didn't know what to make of her wardrobe but couldn't stop her smile to see her daughter all grown up and even more beautiful than she had imagined. And her eyes welled with tears with the first validation she had with her own eyes in nearly twenty years that her daughter was alive. Her hand covered her mouth involuntarily as she waited to meet her little girl again. And her little girl's little girl for the first time.

The first phone call four days ago was a shock. She had restrained herself from asking the dozens of questions on her mind and helped her daughter soothe her baby to sleep. Her daughter had apologized but said she needed to sleep while she could - something her mother understood all too well - and a promise was made to call back soon. That second call came yesterday and offered little more explanation but even more surprises.

_Mom, I don't have much time. There's only so much I can say right now but years ago I made some choices - joined a certain organization - and right now I'm just...I'm over my head. There are bad people looking for us and I can't do what I have to do with a baby. I wish there was another way but I need your help. I'm sorry but you're the only one I can trust with this. I'll see you tomorrow._

There had been no chance for Emma to speak after her initial greeting upon answering the phone. And too much promise in those last few words for her to process. She was going to see her daughter. Actually see her. The daughter who had rattled off all of that information as quickly as humanly possible and had hung up abruptly after Emma had responded simply, without pause or thought of refusing: "Of course."

Emma barely processed the noise of a bustling public place in the background while trying to digest the minimal information that had been conveyed. She had been waiting by the front window ever since. Last night she had pondered what it all meant before eventually falling asleep in the front room facing the street with her head resting on an arm that was limply draped over the back of the couch.

She had no way of knowing that her daughter had deliberately kept the first call limited to the innocuous topic of caring for a baby and the second cryptic and brusk call was carefully worded due to her knowledge of FBI call listening programs in the area. Especially calls with this point of origin. She just hoped monitoring in San Diego was still more focused on calls from across the Mexican border and calls from China were of more interest in San Francisco. Carnivore had been replaced by N.I. for monitoring the web and she knew they were experimenting with digital translation and tracking of voice traffic in major population centers as well. She needed to make sure her mother was expecting them but was being overly cautious not wanting to chance any key words that might be flagged on her mothers non-secure telephone.

But Emma was a clever woman who had spent years wildly speculating and she easily slid the puzzle pieces into a few theories that seemed to fit. Given her daughter's upbringing she could have meant mafia or some crime syndicate but with what little she knew of her daughter's final disappearance, Emma assumed that 'organization' more likely meant government. With the mention of 'bad people' she hoped it didn't mean she was involved with _both_ in some kind of undercover capacity.

Either way, she was astonished at the path her daughter's life had apparently taken since she had fled with her father. And every day since when she had wished her little girl would just come home. Emma regretted that she hadn't been around as much as either of them would have liked just before her daughter ran away. She had buried herself in long hours of work and in her own studies. Trying in vain to forget what was lost and working tirelessly to build a new life once it was just her and her daughter.

But she had forgotten the importance of simply being present in her daughter's life. And of reassuring her daughter that she was not to blame for anything that had happened. She was always so smart and so mature and chose to put far too much responsibility on her own tiny shoulders. She knew her daughter blamed herself and wished she had told her as many times as necessary that none of what had happened was her fault.

Emma had been attending night school to finish her degree - in all honesty, inspired by her brilliant little girl - and one night while Emma's own mother had dozed in front of the television that little girl she so vividly remembered had simply disappeared. Emma had threatened to stop allowing the visits between her daughter and the girl's father when he became unable to or uninterested in holding down a regular job and reverted back to the grifter ways he had left behind years prior. And regretted it every day since.

There were occasional phone calls on or around major holidays and her or her daughter's birthdays and a few in between. If she pushed too hard or argued with her daughter's father she received a simple "I'm sorry, Emma." before he said he had to go and hung up. If she successfully fought that urge she would get an opportunity to hear her baby girl excitedly talk about their previous adventures but never their current whereabouts or activities. Nothing specific or her father would end the call abruptly.

She shared any scrap of information she could gather with the FBI agents assigned to her daughter's case. An attempt at a trace the second year led to a near miss by local law enforcement in South Carolina. And that had led to less frequent and more unpredictable calls that could not longer justify constant monitoring. The FBI never established a pattern from tracking down the origination points of reported calls that would allow them to anticipate her little girl's whereabouts. They were always two steps behind and sometime shortly after her daughter's fourteenth birthday the calls simply stopped.

There was no contact whatsoever from her daughter for five long years. She had hoped she hadn't gotten in too deep in one of her father's cons and gotten herself into some sort of trouble or hurt somehow. He had called on their daughter's eighteenth birthday as though he expected to find the two of them together. He was calling hoping to thank their daughter for something but she wasn't buying his story: witness protection, his record expunged, their daughter somehow separately relocated herself for reasons still unknown to either of them.

She tried to continue her search with the new information he had provided. The agents indirectly confirmed part of the story by informing her that they would no longer be able to assist her in her search. They had been blocked from further investigation of him as a suspect in a kidnapping or any other crime. They still had extensive information in their files of course, but had they attempted to replicate those earlier findings they would have discovered that the man they knew as Jack Burton no longer existed in any government database.

With what little she learned from him she had packed up and moved to the city where he and their daughter had last lived together and briefly employed a private investigator once settled in San Diego. She was surprised that she had found a scrupulous one when he informed her that he simply couldn't continue to take her money after two months of fruitless searching. Jenny Burton, as her daughter had once called herself, like her father, had disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Although she called to check for any new leads twice a year, the case remained forgotten for several years until a female DEA agent that the FBI agent in charge remembered as 'beautiful, but a real ball-buster' came storming in and warned that they should forget everything about her visit and their kidnapping suspect as he was part of a high-profile upcoming trial.

The Federal file clerk with her horn-rimmed glasses and hair pulled back in a ponytail who accompanied the DEA agent was timid and reluctant to make eye contact with anyone but she had presented all the required documentation to seize their files and the agents' case notes. Those files were the last government documents associated with either her daughter or the girl's father. Emma assumed it was part of his witness protection arrangement but now, if not for the few pictures on her wall, it was as though neither Jack nor Jenny Burton had ever existed at all.

She had hoped until two days ago that the rest of the story her daughter's father had told her was true and that her daughter was simply safely relocated to a new life. That she stayed away due to whatever concerns about her safety had driven her into hiding or old hurts. It seemed now that assumption had been partly true. A few vague phone messages over the ensuing years - often just several seconds of dead air - let her know that her daughter was alive. She assumed at the time that her daughter was breaking the rules of her relocation arrangement and would return when it was safe so she didn't push the issue. She had spent years living on the bread and water of these infrequent and brief contacts.

Yesterday's phone call cast cast at least some light on the subject. The timing seemed as though it couldn't possibly be right. She would have been nearly sixteen around the time she was relocated. What would any government 'organization' possibly want with a sixteen year old girl? She assumed her daughter had also witnessed some criminal activity and the government was keeping her safe. But then she had apparently later gone on to become an undercover agent of some kind. An ability to move in the same circles she had developed as her father's understudy likely put to work to stop criminals rather than to commit crimes.

Exploring the idea that she was an undercover agent of some kind she assumed there were similar rules about maintaining her cover so she didn't voice her questions about the nature of her daughter's job on these most recent phone calls. She wondered if even those brief calls had ever put her daughter at risk and assumed that was why so little was ever spoken.

She had fallen asleep on the sofa last night with the thought in her head that all that mattered then or now was that her daughter was still alive. But only now, seeing her here in the flesh, did she truly believe it.

When the strikingly beautiful and completely unfamiliar young woman carrying the baby finally reached the porch she started to say "Mom, I'm so sorry…" but was cut off by her mother's bone crushing hug. It was all Emma could do not to burst into tears. As she melted into her mother's embrace - the first purely loving human contact she had experienced since childhood - even as hardened as she had become her daughter wasn't much better.

She wasn't sure what resources Ryker still had at his disposal, whether there were any additional partners to assist in his pursuit of her or whether he was now already on the run himself. Maybe The Agency would remove the threat for her relatively quickly but maybe others would try to find the little girl and attempt to cash her in like a lottery ticket. She had to act based on her current knowledge of the situation - or lack thereof - and only her fear for her mother's safety made her able to break that embrace.

"There's so much I wish I could tell you but I have no idea whether they've picked up my trail. These are very dangerous people - and I have no idea who else might be involved. The longer I stay the more danger I put you in." The agent had double checked the paper trail many times in the past, utilizing her training to ensure that this was a connection that no one could make. She'd be damned if she let anyone use her mother against her as they had once used her father.

Her identity and her father's were still secure. Graham had kept his word but done a shit job of it. He had promised her father's safety and had chosen his usual methods for dealing with such problems. The clean slate he had promised apparently extended only to 'Jack Burton' and any new arrests would potentially tie to any number of other names. So she had long ago added a few layers of obfuscation to the official records associated with her father's true identity and any other aliases of which she was aware hoping to reduce his criminal footprint and the likelihood of him doing hard time if he were ever caught again.

Every time he had a scrape with the law over the past several years she had found a way to fix it. On the few occasions when they had spoken she never corrected him when he laughed at what he thought to be the incompetence of the police or his good fortune at getting off on various technicalities.

The agent hadn't used her real name since she had left home. Her interference over the years coupled with her father's falsifications of records during her childhood and the fact that her parents had never married had left no traceable connections that she could find. It would take one hell of an investigator to unravel the web of their lies.

She had even abused her powers, her official and unofficial contacts, some of the contacts and skills of her teammates at the time and her still sharp con skills to brazenly run a con of her own against the FBI. She walked into the FBI field office nearest the town where she was born and partly raised - with a teammate using her usual brand of shock and awe to run interference - and walked back out with every scrap of information concerning the investigation of her father for her own kidnapping. She later used the contacts of another teammate - herself an FBI agent - to call in another favor to erase any digital trace of him.

Her father had chosen this life. She could only protect him so much. But her mother was off limits and the farther she kept her from anyone who might want to use her for leverage over her con man father or the agent herself the better. She had never expected to use that disassociation to create a safe haven for someone else. But now that she needed that separation she didn't question her luck at having unwittingly already laid the groundwork. Even knowing what he knew, Langston Graham himself would have a difficult time making this connection if he cared to try.

"God sweetie, this is all so hard to believe. You're some sort of...what? Secret agent? You have a baby girl you need me to take care of. I'm so happy to see you...to see you both but it's just..." and with that Emma looked down at the baby girl in her daughter's arms, sighed deeply and paused before she smiled and asked "She's so beautiful. What's her name?"

The younger woman's icy persona was betrayed as she softened visibly, looked sadly at the little girl and absentmindedly played with one of the girl's curls. She thought briefly of the name she had been calling her if only in her own mind. "I'll leave that to you." she whispered with her gaze not leaving the baby girl's face. "Even I can't know her name. Or yours...you don't have to change it right now but you might have to one day. That way no one can make me tell them anything they could use to find her if we ever have to..." she trailed off.

She had thought this through thoroughly but was having some trouble with this aspect of it. The forever part.

She could isolate herself from the baby but she would have to rely on her mother's judgment to decide if the contingency plans she had written for her to memorize would ever have to be used. And what would happen if she were ever forced to reveal anything about her mother's identity or whereabouts? Or someone dug deeply enough and hard enough to find some connection she had missed? Any failure of her own could mean making her own mother choose between sacrificing herself to save the child or saving herself instead. Force her to burn down the life she had built in her absence to keep this little girl safe.

To face the same test of basic humanity the agent had faced herself just a few days ago and to her shame barely passed. She had no doubts about the outcome if her mother were faced with such a test.

If her mother followed her the plan she had written out the baby would never be traced - but her mother would always be her mother. It was a flawed plan. The only alternatives were to force her mother into hiding or to never tell a soul about her existence. To purge the memory from her own mind. Failing that, Emma Carter would have to vanish.

She wasn't about to fail her mother like that. She could do this. She _had_ done this. Compartmentalism in the extreme. Lock it away with all of the other things she couldn't afford to think about. She began the mental exercise of erasing her mother from her memory. Just as she had an uncanny knack for slipping into another person's skin - becoming the cover - living the lie - she could manipulate the details of her own story. Any of her stories. Just another person that she once briefly was.

Maybe under torture, asked specific questions, it wouldn't hold up. But she bitterly thought that convincing herself that she had no mother wasn't a far cry from her actual childhood. And she was highly trained to resist such interrogation. The walls in her mind were going up easily but she had to get out of here. Now.

"There's some cash and more instructions I thought of on the plane. Some emergency procedures in the bottom of the diaper bag. An account I'll move some money into when I can so you can get what you need. A couple of old contacts you could use to get some documents."

She had chosen only the contacts she believed to still be on good terms with her father and she looked down and fought a feeling of inadequacy at the pathetic excuse for a diaper bag. The government issue canvas, olive drab duffle bag mocked her and only reinforced her feeling of how totally inept she would be as a mother. Luckily someone she knew to be a fantastic mother - one she had once foolishly turned her back on - had stepped up and the child wouldn't be subjected to that additional horror in her young life.

"Use dad's name not mine." _Not any of mine_ she bitterly thought. "Start with Vinnie, he always liked you. Asked about you years after..." _After I left._

She still couldn't face what she had done and here she was disrupting her mother's life again. Forcing her to deal with yet another act that would affect her mother's life far more than her own. And she was running away from her actions again.

She was such a coward. A child playing superhero. And she certainly didn't deserve this precious little girl for however long she could evade the hunters who would pursue them both.

Even the thought of trying to keep her - something that kept invading her thoughts even after she set their destination on San Diego - seemed selfish. A desperate ploy to inject some light back into her life. She started to move to leave - to return to the shadows -and Emma tore herself away from staring at the little girl she was now holding in her own arms when she noticed the physical chasm that had formed between them and realized what all these instructions were leading up to.

"You aren't leaving already? I just found you again. This is your home too. It doesn't have to be this way." Her heart swelled at her mother's plea and the idea that she was still welcome here in her Mother's new home after running away so long ago. But she knew the risks and she knew the reality of the situation. That door was shut forever and she was still running - she would probably be running forever. She didn't have a home.

"Mom, I've thought a lot about this and…and, I can't stay. Because for both of you to be safe well I…I can never see you again. When the CIA recruited me I was on the run with Dad and we changed our identities so much that they never knew you existed. And we can't let them find out about you now. No one in the world knows my real name besides you and Dad. You should be safe."

Even though Director Graham _thought_ he knew her real name, her father had long ago used every shady trick and contact he knew to evade law enforcement including blackmailing a man responsible for processing court mandated changes into providing modified birth records in a way that looked like a simple filing correction. They had avoided the common mistake of retaining her true birthday and later he had bribed someone else to make a similar change to change her name again and make her older on paper, only changing the year of her new birthday. He had found one lie but not the other, certain that he had dug deeply enough to best such common criminals.

She had personally erased any remaining record of her former self when she destroyed every piece of evidence from the FBI's case against her father and the references to her other self contained therein. The friend who had helped her with that particular caper had, uncharacteristically, not even tried to peek. She had just smiled and said it would ruin the mystique.

She still had some secrets - even from Graham. She made a mental note to make sure that job had been done thoroughly and in a way that would survive the scrutiny of any government agency. Erase the child she once was from existence. Sever the last tenuous link between her and her mother despite the improbability of someone ever discovering her birth name. She was almost startled when her mother spoke.

"When you were a little girl all I ever wanted for you was a normal life. But you went off with your father and he was never one to…" Emma sighed as that thought trailed off. She didn't want to belittle her daughter's father. After all she had chosen a life with him all those years ago and stayed with him throughout her childhood. Now was no time to question why she had never come back. She thought she knew her daughter - or at least the little girl she once was - well enough to guess anyway and wished she herself had behaved differently in those final days. Had somehow made it OK to stay.

Emma was surprised that her daughter described her recruitment as occurring when she was still with her father. And the slip her daughter had just made referring to the CIA - accidentally or deliberately confirming her speculation as to the true nature of her government service - had just explained why she hadn't reached out as an adult.

She was as practical as her daughter and realized now that her daughter's sole focus was on her safety and that of the baby in her arms. Realized that there was no exaggeration in her daughter's concerns and that her daughter intended to lead whoever was pursuing her away from here.

Her younger self had always wanted to be a superhero - as likely to don an improvised cape as a tutu. Occasionally both. And apparently now she was one, complete with supervillains and other dangerous foes. Emma had no choice but to trust that she knew what she was doing and was good at what she did or she would never have found her way back to her. But she was awed at her daughter's choice to paint the target on her own back to save the baby girl in an act of maternal selflessness. Even after eighteen years of uncertainty she had never thought she could be this frightened for her daughter. Or this proud.

There were so many things that Emma wanted to tell her - the things she had hoped for her daughter's younger self - but time was getting short. In the few conversations she had with her daughter's father over the past few years she had learned more than she wanted to know about what that life had entailed. And what it had not. "You just...you never got to go trick-or-treating or play on the soccer team or ever get to go to prom or homecoming. I just wish I could have given you at least some of that."

The agent smiled at her mother but didn't specifically respond. These were old regrets and there was nothing that could be done for it now. "Don't forget this. It's important. The instructions tell you all about it. Burn them once you've learned them and always - _always_ \- keep a fresh battery in it."

She handed her mother the beacon disguised as an old-fashioned silver rattle that looked somewhat like a small door knob or drawer pull. Demanding a rush job on that particular modification from one of her underworld contacts in Bangkok - utilizing a remote-activated beacon pilfered from her mission gear - had been an interesting conversation.

"Umm, she likes to be wrapped up in a blanket. It helps her sleep. And the sound of the rain, she likes the sound of the rain. And I've noticed that car rides…"

"It's OK." her mother said softly, trying to infuse her forgiveness of every perceived wrong her daughter may have blamed herself for as she resigned herself to watching her daughter disappear again. "I'll take good care of her."

Emma trusted everything her daughter had told her and her reasoning for leaving so quickly. She was taking small steps away from her as she spoke - slipping away again - but something was preventing her from turning and leaving.

"Yeah, I know...I know..." Maybe there was something that could be done for her regrets. Not for herself, but for this little girl. "Umm…"

"Yes?"

"Going to prom and soccer games and all of those normal things that you wanted for me? Will you just make sure that she gets them?" The hardened CIA agent was barely holding it together. She hadn't thought about that night in a long time. The first time she ran away, her father had returned her with no one the wiser. The second time she had insisted that she just couldn't stay any longer. But now, with her whole world gone pear shaped, she finally knew for certain that night eighteen years ago her seven year old self had made the wrong decision.

"Of course I will."

"Thank you."

And as she looked one last time at her mother and at the baby girl in her arms, the agent knew the girl would be safe and happy here. Knew that this time she had made the right choice. Some things were still worth saving and no matter what her mother ultimately named the little girl, the child would always represent the same thing to her.

_Hope_.

Cruelly, it seemed to Emma, her daughter was gone. Perhaps forever this time though she would never stop hoping that she would one day return. A few minutes at the threshold of her doorway was the extent of the reunion for which she had been waiting nearly twenty years.

Emma Carter briefly lamented the fact that her little girl had grown up to be so much like her father and she would likely never know anything real about her. And she looked down at the pink bundle in her arms, certain that she was looking at her own granddaughter.

At that same moment, as she sped away and continued the mental exercise of excising every scrap of information about her mother from her mind, Emma's daughter realized she had said nothing that would prevent her mother from coming to that conclusion.

.

* * *

003: Gifted

Multiple Locations - Primarily Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) and Boston, MA; Jun 1998 to Apr 2001

.

Annabelle Harvey had a gift. To say she picked up languages easily was like saying Mozart picked up music easily. A certifiable hyper-polyglot, if the experts ever agreed there were such a thing, she worked diligently with CIA language instructors as well as multiple language departments of Harvard College. If she kept her current pace she would finish her college career with an unprecedented triple major in Slavic, Romance and Germanic Languages and Literatures in just three years.

She loved it. She loved the learning on its own merit and likened it to the cons she would run with her father and the many roles she would play. She had self-taught a few languages in her youth but here in a more structured educational environment the process was accelerated exponentially.

Through the travels of her youth, she had mastered multiple dialects and regional accents in English and had a substantial head start on the Romance languages having voraciously studied Spanish and French both in her own haphazard way and in the multiple schools she had attended as a child in her travels with her father whose own Spanish was limited and unconvincing.

She had managed to self-teach both spoken and written Russian fairly well out of random curiosity and a bit of spoken German, Polish and a few others had also slipped in there along the way. Gifts from people she had met - Annabelle's many previous incarnations absorbing every interaction. The first thing she felt she had truly contributed to her father's cons had been looking out for double crosses from her father's business partners as they spoke in their native tongues behind his back while she lingered in the background. Saving his skin more times than either of them cared to count. Protecting him from the shadows.

With mousy brown hair almost always pulled back into a ponytail or up into a sloppy bun and sporting particularly unstylish horn-rimmed glasses and generally frumpy, ill-fitting clothes her intellect was her only remarkable feature. Her father had fostered her gift for mimicry, encouraging her to observe and emulate the inflections and dialects of those around her. And their travels had exposed her to all types of people such that she was able to get by passably in all six of those languages prior to her recruitment.

After some introductory training on maintaining the persona of Annabelle, she entered Harvard off-cycle in the summer of 1998 and there she refined her Spanish, French, German, Polish and Russian somehow compressing the equivalent of two years of study in each into a summer. It was mostly filling in some blanks and by the fall, other token elements of her training adjusted their minimal expectations and intensified considerably. This reduced her blistering pace somewhat but she focused on various regional nuances of the languages she already knew and soon added Czech, Italian and Swedish.

She had also taken on Chinese, Thai and Arabic purely with CIA instructors with an eye toward becoming conversant but not necessarily fluent as she would never pass as a native. Her surprising proficiency was making them evaluate ways she _could_ be made to pass as a native. The information her CIA instructors drilled into her about the nations whose citizens spoke the various languages she was learning would have been more than enough to complete at least one additional degree in International Studies and fool any native unless she accidentally claimed to have once been a neighbor or schoolmate.

Even ignoring the vast amounts of information about cultural norms and regional dialects she incorporated, her instructors at both the CIA and Harvard were amazed at her ability to process the learning of multiple languages simultaneously. It was simply unheard of. To the point that she was called away on multiple occasions for various brain scans while conversing or translating on the fly in any of the languages she had learned. She was told this would help the CIA more accurately identify recruits _capable_ of learning multiple languages. It was a knack she had always had - it just seemed to her that it had intensified since she had joined the CIA's advanced training program.

She had been put through a full week of tests to evaluate her overall health and fitness with an off-the-charts showing in mental acuity, a dismal performance in basic marksmanship (following some basic firearms training), a passable proficiency at basic self defense and as part of testing for various vaguely-described and unnamed research projects. These results had later been used to coordinate her training upon which she had already been extremely focused. She surprised herself with her proficiency in many areas and their methods had seemed to noticeably improve her ability to absorb, retain and recall information.

The Agency had intervened on her behalf to significantly modify the required core curriculum. She didn't regret losing the quantitative and science requirements. As brilliant as she was she always had little interest in those subjects. She also wondered if she was the only person at Harvard who would not be required to satisfy any sort of Moral Reasoning requirement. She had already read most of the required texts recreationally anyway.

She had laughed at this exception considering a certain so-called 'moral flexibility' was one of the traits Deputy Director Graham cited that made her a good fit for what he needed in an agent. He had never explained to her that actually obtaining a degree was completely superfluous to his plans for her. Graham had also arranged for his recent batches of recruits to bypass all psychological screenings. Annabelle would have failed them all spectacularly.

Annabelle's story was that she aspired to be a linguist for the UN. She secretly entertained the fanciful notion of becoming a teacher one day. Like her mother.

She didn't socialize much and was rarely seen on campus during what should have been her downtime. She looked at least as old as most of her fellow students but Graham had worked his magic such that her credentials declared her to be eighteen when she first enrolled.

Her father had worked his less elegant brand of magic several times over prior to that. The unintended result was that no one, with the possible exception of the man who had recruited her, realized she was only sixteen years old when she first arrived at Harvard and barely sixteen at that. Sixteen and, with her recent regrettable high school experiences, completely unprepared to interact with other college students much less deal with the impossible workload she had undertaken.

There were many discussions amongst the faculty that they shouldn't allow such a heavy workload and should encourage her to participate in more social activities as no one ever remembered seeing her outside of class. When the topic was raised to the Dean he replied that a significant donor was acting as her benefactor and wanted to ensure that she studied as many or few languages as she liked.

With the largest endowment fund of any university in America by far it was never clear why one particular donor carried so much weight but Annabelle continued to express her desire to press on with her studies. She knew better than to say differently and said it with a smile. Graham did his part and, for his trouble, ensured that the Dean's brother in law received a very favorable early parole arrangement.

No one knew where she went when she wasn't on campus but when she was there her work ethic was unmatched. She had been warned that failure to achieve her training goals could result in any number of unpleasant repercussions up to and including termination of her candidacy with an ominous emphasis on the word 'termination'. Or worse in her opinion, reassignment to training for a lesser role.

They needn't have bothered. She was driven to accomplish something everyone around her seemed to consider impossible simply because it was impossible. She found that she could hide from the unpleasantness of her recent high school days by throwing herself into something she was truly good at.

She was the darling of her professors despite her awkward demeanor, reserved nature and having become even more withdrawn over the past six months - even as she gradually abandoned her scholarly appearance for something more alluring - but Annabelle would never actually complete a degree of any kind.

.

* * *

Lydia Blake was a daredevil prodigy. The last weekend of every month Lydia travelled to various locations - an entirely new one every few months. Most of this began in November of 1998, well after Annabelle Harvey arrived in Cambridge. For the first several months these weekends were mostly spent on the salt flats of Utah driving vehicles of all types beyond their limits in tactical driving training. Despite her true age she had possessed a driver's license for well over a year. One acquired from a friend of her father of course, that also matched her vehicle registration under a name other than Jenny Burton.

Although she should have only been recently allowed to operate a vehicle that was one of many rules she and her father had ignored. She had been driving their cars since she had been tall enough to do so relatively safely - since the summer she turned twelve. Now she got her chance to drive every type of commercially available vehicle under the sun. Everything from big rigs and dump trucks to high-performance sports cars and motorcycles. She had a gift for it and one thing was immediately apparent - fast was her default setting.

For a few months after that she spent those weekends at Fort Rucker in Alabama learning to fly all manner of helicopters. Primarily Hueys and Blackhawks. Here she was an Army lieutenant with yet another name. Very little emphasis was placed on actual flight time. Her emphasis was on 'bug out and put down' and a few evasive maneuvers. She wasn't being trained to transport fellow agents per se. She was being trained so that in an emergency she could take the controls and get herself and any mission related intel or other materials she might be carrying - and any teammates or friendlies if reasonably feasible - out of a hot zone and subsequently set the bird down safely.

Helicopters eventually gave way to the same sort of paranoid thinking but for light aircraft and business jets at Vance Air Force Base near Enid, Oklahoma. Flying T-1A Jayhawk and T-6A Texan training aircraft. And Lydia briefly gave way to another name and another rank in a different military branch. She really wanted to get into a T-38 but there was no justification for learning to fly a supersonic trainer. She was preparing for aircraft she might encounter on missions and a fighter aircraft was simply not considered likely.

The likely scenario was described with the more palatable euphemism of 'in the event of an emergency'. Creating such an emergency by killing or incapacitating all on board was a possible reality they did not yet think she was prepared to face.

The pattern was broken up occasionally with other specific trainings. The first of which occurred in an aircraft hangar at Reagan International Airport in June of 1998 in her first days after reporting to accept Graham's offer. Figuratively signing her life away as there had been no actual official record of her - only a highly classified 'ghost file' accessible by a mere handful of people in the entire US Government. This was months before Lydia even came into existence - long before the salt flats and the air bases. Even before Annabelle Harvey arrived in Cambridge.

It was not her favorite - focusing on manipulating and maintaining her appearance for various covers. They had pulled directly up to a large isolation chamber in the center of the hanger where she could come and go and try on new faces without being seen by most of the people present.

She had been so excited about having her braces removed that she hadn't noticed the looks exchanged between the two dental technicians. Although perfectly qualified for the work, they had never actually seen a recruit with their teeth still in braces.

Though her smile was now by any definition perfect, she had hoped they would fix her teeth. She had been teased mercilessly about her big front teeth and had never really accepted that she had grown into them and that her smile was among her best features.

But they finally convinced her that none of her teeth were too big or too small and that her smile was unique enough to be intriguing but hard to specifically describe as a potential identifying feature and wouldn't need to be modified. Even so, ten years of being reluctant to smile only aided her ability to school her expression and hide her true feelings. A skill equally as valuable in her new career as it was on a con.

A half dozen beauticians next went to work on her in turns with a few similar reactions. Some had experience making underage girls look inappropriately alluring in previous fashion industry experience and were unfazed. Others were less jaded and more protective of her. For her part, having just turned sixteen upon reporting to the address Graham had given her she was equal parts intrigued and uncomfortable.

She couldn't have imagined how much there was to a beauty regimen. One of the more protective cosmetologists helped her compile a running list of instructions for skin and hair care routines and other grooming reminders. The session was much more instruction than any kind of pampering but never having any friends to do this sort of thing with other than trying to emulate a few older acquaintances she found it completely overwhelming.

Her hair was cut, finger and toe nails cut and polished and stripped again, every part of her scraped or peeled or waxed or plucked. She was taught how to apply makeup to varying effect and how to properly apply a wig and some prosthetics. Her hair was restored to her natural blonde correcting the effects of the boxed color that she had recently used in an attempt to fix an equally unfortunate bleach job.

She was pleasantly surprised with what the experts could do to her appearance after they removed the braces from her teeth and coifed and manicured and otherwise beautified her in every possible way. The hair stylist was briefly left alone with her while teaching her to properly apply a wig and a few ways to wear her now lustrous, long blonde hair.

The stylist had signed what seemed like dozens of non-disclosure agreements and had a vague idea what was going on here from gossip by some of the others who had done something like this before and the frightening security presence. She was trying to stifle her earlier reaction to the young girl in her chair, her vivid imagination concerning the complexity and security of the operation and the various possibilities such a beautiful girl might be being prepared for.

She let the girl's hair fall naturally with its simple wave and leaned in to whisper the only piece of advice she dared "Just don't go growing up too fast, hun." before turning the girl around in her chair to face the mirrors.

She bit back her snarky response to that as the chair turned, thinking vaguely that she grew up a long time ago. But she was completely unprepared to see herself like this. As she should have been. A pretty young girl with minimal makeup and a perfect smile.

She looked like her mother.

She had barely a moment to process the unfamiliar beauty staring back at her in the tri-fold mirrors. She sat stunned in the glaring lights with her eyes locked on those of a beautiful young woman she didn't know. One so different than the one who had been picked on mercilessly for the last year and a half. One who disappeared again as a few of her attendants returned and focus turned to hiding or altering that beauty and her true face in various ways to take on the specific appearance of multiple identities.

A bookish student named Annabelle who would soon be attending one of the most prestigious colleges in the world. A gothic outcast named Sloan who would frequent a few training sites near to but separate from Annabelle's world. A red haired daredevil without a name who would later become a young woman named Lydia. They each had their parts to play and were added to her portfolio along with many others. After a weekend of instruction and with the right materials she could become any of them in minutes. There was no room left for the girl she should have been.

Months after this shocking reveal certain decisions were made based on the observations and recommendations of her instructors in Boston and Lydia came to life for those specialized driving and flying trainings. Her basic martial arts training had revealed untapped potential and her expectations had been significantly modified. Later trainings were even more physically active in nature.

She was sent for paratrooper training - starting with basic recreational skydiving and rapidly advancing to Military Free Fall training including both HALO and HAHO jumps. The adrenaline junkie in her loved the HALO jumps. She was also trained in advance dive techniques. Again starting with a recreational approach to SCUBA diving, to advanced rebreathers and DPDs and, finally, unassisted free diving to world record standards. All while wearing high-tech cat suits or wet suits and custom goggles that monitored every possible physical and neurological response.

Some were harrowing like her modified Level C SERE training - a special session she attended with no other candidates - or simple practical adjustments like her trainings on long-range and heavy weapons that could not be accommodated in her usual shooting facility. Some were less exciting but no less useful, like combat medical and tactical communications training or working on her hot wiring and lock picking skills. She was already a decent car boost and proficient with a pick-and-wrench but she could now drive off in most cars inside of a minute and crack simple locks in just a few precious seconds. With a full kit, her lock picking would make her the envy of any legitimate locksmith but she minimized her usual tools to a few reliable, multifunctional ones.

She was also taught how to bypass or otherwise defeat state-of-the-art electronic locks. Sometimes with proper equipment, sometimes with decidedly low-tech, improvised tools. _MacGyvering_ they called it after an old TV show she had seen a few episodes of when she was little. Similar treatment was given to alarm systems including hacking and looping video surveillance.

She was an innovative thinker but also a deliberate planner and her instructors were impressed with how quickly she absorbed the principles of strategic and tactical assault planning and how well she applied them. They shouldn't have been - thinking two steps ahead had been how she had kept her father out of jail and above ground her entire childhood.

On occasion she was taken to a medical facility where a small army of technicians put her through various tests and full body and brain scans while she sparred with single or multiple opponents to evaluate the toll her training had taken on her body - typical of any agent training they assured her. In early 2001 she was sent for abdominal surgery to preventatively remove her appendix and address a potential hernia. She had been laid up for two weeks and used the time to learn Portuguese. Or at least the foundations - Annabelle would be fluent in no time. Otherwise, up until around that time, it was all go all the time.

Lydia loved that one weekend a month. In fact, Lydia only existed that one weekend a month - when she wasn't adopting a cover within a cover. She was fearless and all her instructors agreed that she had a surprising knack for any and all of the crazy maneuvers they trained her to execute. On wheels or wings the girl could fly and she became a master of every possible manner of incursion and evasion.

According to public records, Lydia Blake succumbed to smoke inhalation in an accidental house fire in Portland, Oregon on April 12, 2001.

Of all the places she had travelled for her various trainings Portland was not one of them.

.

* * *

Sloan Gershon possessed an unexpected gift. She was graceful and fluid in her movements which, with the right training, were translated into brutal and lethal. She had danced as a young girl and loved it but grew tall and lanky early on and was discouraged from seriously pursuing it both by her instructors and her father.

Her instructors said they considered her long, lean physique atypical for a dancer but she knew it was more that she was just a little bit clumsy and awkward as she adjusted to the rapid changes to her body. Her father deemed it an impractical skill that was too difficult and expensive to pursue while changing towns every few months.

People in this affluent neighborhood gave her a wide berth with her jet black hair styled in a shoulder length bob, dark makeup, strategically ripped clothing, and a small nose ring in her left nostril - a real one - her one small, short-lived rebellion against all of the structure imposed on her life. Besides her instructors, the only person who interacted with her was a young woman named Wendy who worked at a nearby coffee shop.

Every Wednesday and Friday afternoon and most Sunday mornings, Sloan waited there pensively contemplating the latest learnings of her other selves - nursing a black, unsweetened coffee - like her father used to drink - prior to attending her training in a small nearby dojo attached to a vacant store with blacked out windows.

Like Annabelle, she had always had a gift for mimicry but Sloan's training emphasized the physical aspects of that gift. Her assessments had revealed a number of poorly executed but still effective judo and aikido throws and restraints. Gifts from her father - or more accurately an associate of her father - in case she ever needed to 'get out of a jam'. Her uncanny ability to almost perfectly mimic the movements of her instructors allowed her to easily correct the form of the few moves she already knew once she was properly instructed on the principles of leverage they relied upon.

Her proficiency was entirely unexpected. It was not the reason she had been recruited. New and more instructors were brought in after five months - what had originally been intended to be the end of her 'foundational' training period - and plans were made to experiment and expand her training with specialized paramilitary trainings under different identities once per month. Most of these would be based upon the trainings required for the Air, Maritime and Ground branches of the Special Operations Group of the CIA's Special Activities Division and conducted at private training centers. And thus, Lydia Blake was born.

After some early successes, Sloan's instructors quickly learned to follow her suggestion that she first be allowed to observe moves from the side, standing in a designated spot in the corner of the room against the wall between the dojo and the adjacent vacant space. She often returned to the mat with the new skill at least roughly duplicated and sometimes nearly perfected and focus turned to seamlessly incorporating it into the skills she had already mastered.

Sloan found the addition of striking techniques viscerally satisfying and the force she was able to generate with her long limbs was devastating. She may have been too tall to be a ballerina but - when it came to inflicting damage - she was made for it.

Another five months after the decision was made to significantly expand her martial arts training it was her sole female instructor who inadvertently planted the seed in her mind. Xiuying's specialties were Wing Chun and Krav Maga, two close-quarters fighting styles with very different philosophies. But it was when she watched Sloan fight in more open styles that she first noticed Sloan's ability to efficiently and naturally chain moves together.

Compliments were rare in the dojo but Xiuying quietly made the spontaneous observation in her native Mandarin that Sloan was "a creature of extraordinary grace" who "moved like a dancer." Sloan was the only person present who heard and understood what Xiuying had said. She smiled slightly but was met with only a curt nod.

Sloan considered the possibility for a few weeks before attempting to convince her instructors to supplement her training by including ballroom dance. She argued quite logically and unemotionally that dance was the childhood training that helped her tie her martial arts moves together so fluidly and would be a useful infiltration skill in its own right.

In May of 1999, when her instructors agreed and told her they had received approval to allow three hours of dance instruction every two weeks, Sloan simply nodded and maintained a stone faced expression. Outwardly, the supposedly eighteen year old agent in training was impassive; inwardly, the still sixteen year old girl squealed with delight.

Every other Wednesday her dance instructor, Keith, would pick her up at the coffee shop and take her to a nearby studio two blocks away where she sometimes worked with other older recruits but usually just with Keith. He was classically handsome with a strong jaw, dark blue eyes and wavy hair. He was tall and lanky with broad shoulders that made his thin frame seem even more tapered. Tall enough that they fit together well when she wore the heels to which she eventually grew accustomed.

The adrenaline junkie and the scholar had other outlets. In those activities she found fulfillment and accomplishment. But this was a glamorous and elegant representation of the lifestyle she hoped to lead soon. It was the one pure joy in Sloan's militantly regimented life.

She intensified her focus on her combat training to ensure the privilege was continued and after eight more months her training expanded into weapons - various edged weapons, sticks, staves and firearms. She was already a deadeye with a knife; at least a knife with which she was familiar. Another gift from her father who seemed to know every concealed weapons law in the United States and a brief but educational stint traveling with a carnival.

This skill was not a surprise to her instructors having been advised of it by the man who had recruited her but her ability to adapt it to other skills was a welcome surprise. She learned to quickly assess and throw with pinpoint accuracy any rigid object with a pointy end. Escrima sticks were similar enough to close quarters knife fighting and the Bo was an entirely different animal but proficiency with both was desirable because reasonable approximations of both weapons could often be found just lying around.

Firearms were a different story. Her father had told her the old adage "Don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill" and it had the intended effect - making her frightened of even being near a gun. He had always said they cause more problems than they solve and if you see that a mark is armed get away as quickly as possible. He hadn't always heeded that advice himself but did often change their plans to back away from cons on unexpectedly armed marks - when they could afford it.

The vacant store and the dojo had a sound proof range in their shared basement where she worked with pistols and a few assault rifles. She was tasked with breaking them down, cleaning and reassembling until she could do it blindfolded with the components of three different unidentified weapons in a jumbled pile in front of her before she ever fired a shot. She persisted and - despite the kick and the sound which had both scared the hell out of her the first few times - her accuracy was improving when she didn't think too much about the damage the bullets could do to a real person.

Keith hadn't known what to think of the 'Goth chick' sent to him for ballroom dance instruction. After the first few sessions she had lightened up on her makeup and ditched the nose ring at Graham's insistence (though it left a barely noticeable, easily concealed scar) and it had become obvious to him how young she was. And how interested she was.

Never given any time to socialize with college classmates or fellow trainees on her crash courses and with all of her male martial arts instructors being grizzled veterans of various armed forces at least twenty years older than her, Keith wasn't just extremely attractive, he was also the only reasonably viable option for any romantic interest.

After six months and a dozen classes, one day dancing a tango she had feigned being swept up in the moment and tried to kiss him. Keith pulled away slightly and locked gazes with her for an uncomfortably long time before asking how old she was. She persisted in returning his stare and lied.

"Twenty" she said when, in truth, she had turned seventeen five months ago.

Upon first meeting her, he noted that she was undeniably beautiful but then all of the recruits he had seen come through this facility were. But over time two key differences became apparent: First, she had already outlasted any of the prior women sent to this brutal training program by far and most of the men. He himself had only lasted four months before being considered 'capped out' in terms of his potential. And second, she clearly had no idea, or at least acceptance, of how remarkably beautiful she was. Even so, he had a baby sister older than Sloan. It wouldn't be fair.

He studied her for a moment longer and then told her "You're a good liar but you'll have to be better. I'd hate to see you die." Keith was a good man but he also knew they were being watched. Sloan was actually _enjoying_ her training and he knew she still had no idea what she had gotten herself into. He was ten years her senior even if she _had_ been twenty. He suspected she was barely eighteen when they had started working together six months ago not thinking that an underage recruit was even a possibility.

Sloan was embarrassed at the aborted kiss and more than a little disappointed. She had been secretly plotting that moment for a month. But she hid all of that behind her best con artist smile, took a guess and asked "So, who is she? Wife? Girlfriend?"

"Neither." he smiled back "But you are very perceptive."

"So...it's not that there isn't someone in your life but you aren't together. Why not?" she continued to pry.

"The life of an agent is...difficult...sometimes. It's hard to actually have a real relationship. Especially for female agents." He paused as he considered how much to reveal of what was yet to come. "Its completely unfair but they have a harder..." they were interrupted by the ringing of Keith's phone. He checked the display and excused himself to answer it. When he returned he was polite and his usual smiling self but he was also all business.

Keith never brought it up again and she never tried anything again. When they were alone she tried to ask him questions about life as an agent but he would only vaguely respond and emphasize that there was a lot she still had to learn and that he hoped she would be OK. He tried to limit their discussion to social graces and etiquette but she shared some vague aspects of her past and her hope to redeem herself through her service as an agent.

Eventually Keith shared some of the tamer stories of his time as an agent that he hoped would provide some valuable lessons. Graham and his people had been watching and had warned him not to scare her off in any way. But Keith had come to think of her as a little sister and worried at her naiveté. He never voiced his concerns to her about why she was still here - constantly training - when she was already, according to her instructors, one of the most proficient martial artists they had ever trained.

One Wednesday, after a year and a half of twice-monthly dance lessons, Frank, her Jujitsu and Aikido instructor, was waiting at the coffee shop. Her face dropped as he held out a cup containing her usual coffee order - one of the sugar free vanilla lattes Keith had introduced her to - and told her to come with him. She knew not to question her instructors but her instincts were buzzing and her swirling thoughts drifted to how he knew her usual drink and, randomly, mused that all of her male combat instructors were named Frank or Steve regardless of ethnicity.

Frank ducked into the locker room briefly and when he returned he stated very calmly "We're discontinuing your dance sessions. What do you think we should focus on instead?" They were in a position where 'Frank' knew the cameras couldn't see her face and as he turned to walk the same direction as her he whispered "K.I.A." and discreetly slipped her a small piece of paper folded in half. There had been a longer letter in Keith's spy will that Graham had intercepted. But Keith had known Frank for a long time and had addressed the letter containing the innocuous note - and a patently false story about its meaning - to him. Frank knew from the choice of paper alone who it was really for.

"I'm not sure. Can I go change and we can discuss it?" Sloan had managed not to react on the dojo floor and retreated to the locker room with the note clutched tightly in her fist. _K.I.A._ Somehow, she naïvely had not even considered the fact that Keith was also a field agent and was off doing dangerous things in between their sessions. She felt the tears threatening and a pressure rising in her throat as she smoothed out the crumpled corner of a breakfast menu from her - their - usual coffee shop and slowly unfolded it. There were only two words.

_Stay Alive._

The tears dissolved into anger as she wondered why he couldn't have followed his own advice. She splashed cold water on her face and focused on stilling her shaking hands before she changed and went back out to where Frank was waiting.

"Shooting." she said without prompt and without pausing as she passed where he was standing and walked toward the stairwell to the basement shooting range. She had no idea where to direct her anger or who was responsible for Keith's death. But for the first time in her life, Sloan felt the urge to kill someone.

Every other Wednesday became additional time on the shooting range and her anger intensified. Her training schedule had been scaled back somewhat when injuries to sparring partners and instructors became frequent occurrences as her fighting style had become vicious. She and her instructors had created a fluid and brutal combat style that emphasized her speed and leverage against larger, physically stronger opponents.

Her once perfect form was compromised somewhat by her newfound savagery when angry - which seemed to be all the time now. It created holes in her defense but the overall effect had become even more deadly. The addition of bladed weapons to her unique hybrid hand-to-hand style had evolved into something one of the 'Steves' enthusiastically described as "the Tazmanian devil covered in razor blades".

Over those six months her shooting had become lethal and she never worried again about what a bullet could do to flesh. If she ever pointed a gun at someone it would be because she intended to kill them.

After a few months, the unseen team of scientists in the vacant store next to the dojo declared that they had gathered all the data they needed from the martial artist - the perfect template for future trainees. And the transition from artist to fighter was what Graham had been watching for. Now that the young woman was no longer so easily mistaken for a young girl, they were ready to move to the next stage of her training.

Sloan Gershon didn't come in for coffee on April 11, 2001. The dojo closed the next day and the only trace of her ever existing was the woman at the coffee shop. When an Agent performed a follow up assessment Wendy spoke of the goth girl whose edge had softened a bit over those three years would simply regurgitate what Sloan had mumbled to her a few days prior when Sloan informed her that she was going away: it was 'something to do with a boy'.

It was what Sloan had been instructed to say but Wendy hoped the boy in question was the tall man who had stopped coming around several months ago. Every other Wednesday had been the only times she had seen Sloan smile.

.

* * *

Harvard University; October 2000

.

Annabelle Harvey hadn't been informed of any funeral arrangements for Keith but really hadn't expected to be. She had thrown herself into her studies in an attempt to hide from the unwelcome and unacknowledged emotions threatening to cripple her but the CIA seemed to have conspired to reduce the workload of all her incarnations.

Sloan's training sessions were more maintenance and brief, extremely intense sparring sessions at this point with Sunday sessions shortened and Friday sessions removed completely. Lydia had only been called upon once in the last three months and only two training missions for additional identities had come up during that time. Annabelle had been focusing on combination accents - accents of the native speakers of one language while speaking another language - and various dialects of previously studied languages. She had not added any new languages to her repertoire since the summer. She was getting anxious and felt a need to fill her time when one of her professors introduced her to a young woman named Amber Reynolds.

Amber was average height, with a curvy figure, long chestnut hair and bright green eyes. She was an outgoing sociology major taking French as an elective because she had always wanted to visit France. Amber was 22 and approaching her graduation but didn't want to drop the class and admit defeat. She had asked her professor who among the students in his classes might be able to help her and, of course, Annabelle's name sprung to mind.

They scheduled their tutoring sessions for late every Friday afternoon, became better acquainted with each other and after a few sessions Amber invited Annabelle to go clubbing with her. It quickly became something of a work-hard, play-hard habit. A habit that soon spread into the weekend and eventually more nights than not.

Annabelle confided what she could in Amber. Nothing about her real purpose at Harvard nor where and how she had spent every hour of what would have been a typical college student's free time over the last two and a half years but about her insecurities and parts of her history. Her ugly duckling phase, her treatment in high school and her complete lack of social life to date. And her sorrow over the death of someone she could now reluctantly admit that she had seen as more than a friend even if his heart had belonged to someone else.

Amber listened patiently and urged her to embrace life rather than dwell on death. Annabelle was a stunning young woman now - or was when she planned on a night at the clubs - and Amber understood the awkwardness of never having been the subject of male attention and suddenly being capable of turning every head in a room. Amber encouraged her, pushed her to get out and live, introduced her to people until Annabelle was much more comfortable introducing herself, and listened to plans, anxieties and stories of first kisses and first everything-else through a four month whirlwind of everything Annabelle had not previously experienced in her young life.

Amber only had two rules: don't do anything you don't want to do and do absolutely everything you _do_ want to do.

Annabelle was just so incredibly tired. Tired of the endless training and studying, tired of the anxiety over what was to come, tired of grieving her dead friend and tired of dwelling on her own likely similar fate. She eventually decided that, since she had the opportunity, she was going to live a little while it was still possible. With no clear mental picture of her future, she focused on the present. She allowed herself to become lost in the pumping bass of the clubs and the physical exertion it brought with it. She had lost one dance partner but found many others. It wasn't much in the way of a tribute of any kind but it did make her forget for a while.

Being roughly halfway between her eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays Annabelle was underage but even a fake ID was never required. Alcohol flowed freely and later Amber started offering her little pink pills to help them keep dancing until the club closed. She initially refused, eliciting a simple shrug from Amber, but eventually relented on occasion.

Amber wasn't interested in relationships, pointing out to Annabelle that they would both be moving on soon and didn't need any puppy dogs dragging them down. Annabelle was secretly amused by just how accurate that sentiment was. _Nos morituri te salutamus_, she morbidly thought in her less guarded moments.

She was vaguely aware that all of this training was building up to some kind of end. One likely resulting in a drastically reduced life expectancy. But she felt unburdened in these moments - fueled by loud music, alcohol and other relatively mild drugs and the attentions of her dance partners. It wasn't long before she was following Amber's lead and leaving the club with the eager and undeniably attractive men they had met there. First as a wingman and soon thereafter working up the nerve to choose a lucky few to escort her home with admonitions from Amber to not do anything she wouldn't do. Which was a remarkably low bar.

She did as much or as little with them as she wanted at that particular moment in time. Her first was tall and lanky, sweet and funny. She chose him deliberately because he seemed to think he had no chance with her and she was pretty sure she utterly broke his heart without even meaning to. But she knew she was on borrowed time and had no future to offer. A few never bothered her again and she never met up with any of them more than three or four times over no more than two weeks. Amber supplied the script for the more persistent ones as well - something she now realized would likely be true as long as she was a part of the world she was being trained to join: _I'm just not looking for anything serious right now_.

Her general exhaustion was impossible to hide but it was infinitely better than the vague depression she had felt herself slipping into prior to meeting Amber. Even so her instructors noticed the change and told her to get her shit together. That she had her fun and it was time to get back to work. In late February she did her time in hospital and in mid-March her assignments increased again. Sure enough, Portuguese was easily mastered and she cut her and Amber's outings back to their previous Friday only schedule.

She and Amber's Friday evenings became more sedate, Amber told of her plans to travel to France after graduation but Annabelle was vague about her own plans. Annabelle had been told by her instructors to be ready...that she had excelled thus far and they were nearly done with the appetizers and ready for the final stages of her training as an Agent.

Annabelle's concerns about how to cut ties with her new friend were preempted when Amber told her she had to devote more time to catching up on her report for a major research project she was working on for a psychology course. Annabelle still occasionally saw her in passing around campus but Friday night dinners had thankfully been replaced with cramming for courses and Amber seemed to only return Annabelle's few messages with messages of her own when Annabelle was unreachable during her training. The two simply slipped out of each others' lives.

Annabelle Harvey died April 12, 2001 struck by a drunk driver in a Super Duty pickup truck a few weeks before her commencement. Her yellow, convertible Volkswagen Rabbit - bought from a girl in California three years ago according to public records - was obliterated. Mangled beyond recognition. The remnants of the vehicle had caught fire and Annabelle surprisingly had no available dental records but the distinctive vehicle was widely known to belong to her.

The college honored a request by her patron for no remembrance or special mention out of respect for the privacy of Annabelle's similarly fabricated family but she remains something of a legend amongst the faculty.

Amber Reynolds disappeared the same day and has no record of ever attending Harvard University.

.

* * *

York County, VA; Sat Apr 14, 2001 5:55 pm

.

What with one thing and another, three years passed.

Annabelle, Lydia and Sloan had kept quite busy - Sloan training in between Annabelle's classes and study sessions and vice versa. Both gave way one weekend per month to Lydia and her driving, flying and tactical assault training. For some training missions she was someone else entirely. In all her guises, she loved the learning itself and being so good at something and felt a rush of pride when she contemplated that she was being groomed for an important role in bringing justice to the world. She may have missed out on some of the experiences her fellow students enjoyed but it was a sacrifice she was willing to make for the greater good. To be something better.

It wasn't exactly fulfilling but she was glad that she had been granted a brief period when she had been able to create a tiny pocket universe where she had attempted to squeeze the most fun and life affirming activities she was comfortable with allowing herself into the little time that she had available before becoming a non-person. She decided then and there that would be the extent of her self-indulgence. In the male dominated world of espionage she had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to allow anyone any indications that anything she achieved was done on her back.

Nearly every waking moment of her life had been scheduled for her over those three years. Punctuated by occasional simple missions under a variety of aliases limited to simple reconnaissance and surveillance or stealth infiltrations (which she prided herself as being quite good at but preferred to think of more honestly as burglaries).

After some of these missions she was required to report to Graham himself at his official Langley office and review her development. There she assumed her 'Alpha alias' of Sarah Walker. The name he had granted her upon her recruitment was the most seldom used of her recurring identities but also drew no attention when she was there or at his other office in DC. She assumed her various covers perfectly and these 'trial missions' whetted her appetite for the life of adventure that Deputy Director Graham had promised.

After a short flight, a car with a driver who refused to speak or respond to her picked her up at the airport late that afternoon. There was an ominous, unsigned handwritten note on the back seat saying simply: _Time to earn your keep_.

Two days after the deaths of Annabelle Harvey and Lydia Blake and three days after the disappearance of Sloan Gershon, two months shy of her actual nineteenth birthday, a by-all-accounts twenty-one year old woman with shoulder length hair - its natural blonde muted to a light brown - named Stacy Mills arrived at what outwardly appeared to be a run-down complex of farm buildings in rural Virginia.

The more traditionally recruited candidates reported to the nearby, more widely known CIA training facility less-than-affectionately referred to as The Farm.

This highly classified and seldom utilized secondary training location seemed a better fit for that name but this location was reserved to sequester recruits for special projects. It's official operational designation was a 10-digit number but those few trainees sent here almost all independently came to refer to it simply as The Facility.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Story Notes (aka 'I should start a blog')

There was a lot about seductions in Ch 1 but it is so heavily leveraged and alluded to in S1 I wanted to establish some boundaries and expectations right from the off and let people decide for themselves if they can stomach it rather than blindsiding anyone later. Spoiler Alert: I never intend to portray Sarah as engaging in an extreme seduction but I didn't want to simply declare it so or artificially insulate her from such things. Once its introduced there are many potential treatments and now you have seen the bare bones of most of them. It's an abusive concept and will always be treated as such.

Ch 2 begins to dispel the notion that any mother would knowingly 'allow' her daughter to run around the country with her known con man of a father (more on this will be gradually revealed but not for a while after the prologue). Canon gently encourages us to assume that Sarah (completely unnamed here) kept up at least some contact with her mother prior to these events and told Emma about Molly's full story off-camera - or at least clarified this plausible misconception - but I treat neither as true. In honor of Cheryl Ladd (of _Charlie's Angels_ fame), yes, that was an implied CATs sighting.

And Ch 3 covers another purpose of this prologue - to address how (and later _why_) she is so highly trained. A side effect was addressing some lingering fanon assumptions (based on old NBC website 'spy dossiers' - since removed / redacted (snicker)) that create the impression that Graham dropped a prized recruit off at Harvard for four years with some spending money and all expenses paid and let her have a normal college experience out of the goodness of his heart. (The CIA is/was known to recruit extensively at Ivy League schools but we later found out even in canon he got his hooks into her much earlier.)

I have seen the _concept_ of an 'Alpha alias' floating around before but I've only ever seen that particular _term_ first used by atcDave on the _Chuck This_ forum so credit goes to him for that!

The FBI's packet sniffer 'Carnivore' (later renamed the more palatable DCS1000 but doing _exactly_ the same thing - ostensibly differentiating between Internet communications that can and cannot be lawfully intercepted) and its commercial replacement, NarusInsight (N.I.) could/can be used to monitor email and other Internet traffic. The idea of somehow less-lawfully extending such a thing into intercepting or analyzing voice communications is pure speculation on my part.

Finally, I emphasized Sarah's youth during her training ad nauseam to provide anchors to my complicated timeline spanning nearly three years and three different primary training identities. I'll be glad to finally start calling her 'Sarah' rather than referring to her by four different names in Chapters 1 &amp; 3 and no name whatsoever in Chapter 2 but in the case of her age I am not taking liberties with canon (much).

The closest thing to a canon birth _month_ is actually in a file on Gertrude Verbanski's desk ('Bearded Bandit'; episode 5.02) - although Sarah never explicitly confirms it and the report goes on to state (if you press 'pause' and can read upside-down - a handy spy skill I possess) that they have zero confidence that anything in the report is accurate - so I tweak it by a month for two inconsequential reasons. (You won't notice the first one until I gift wrap the second one in a few chapters.)

Assuming Gertrude and I are close - not personally, but on this topic - Sarah is nine months younger than Chuck (eight if you choose to believe Gertrude) and, based on events of 'Cougars' her father must have seriously tweaked her records. I declare it was to such a degree that even Verbanski Corp. didn't completely unravel the truth.

I emphasize all this because most fans do not immediately realize that if the dates basically hold up, _even in canon_, despite presumably being a high school senior or how old anyone _thinks_ she is, when Graham recruits her she is still _fifteen_ years old.

(As a side-note - to a side-note, I suppose - I've always found it odd that Chuck's 'quarter-life crisis' birthday party - occurring last night as of the events of Ch 2 - is actually his 26th rather than 25th. Apparently 104 is the denominator. It reminds me of Daffy Duck as Robin Hood with his 'buck-and-a-quarter quarterstaff'...)

SERE is Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. Level C is for captives more 'likely to be exploited' but with POW status that a disavowed spy is unlikely to have.

See you in two weeks for another double-feature!


	3. III: Jenny

...in which a government agent receives an update on recent suspicious activity before receiving the details of her next assignment and a look back at the day she and the current Director first met...

Canon Reference: occurring simultaneously with early events of 'Intersect' (aka the Pilot, episode 1.01) via a flashback scene from 'Baby' (episode 5.08) and REPLACES the final flashback scene of that episode; flashback elements of 'Cougars' (episode 2.04)

Contents: OMG! A manageable installment? Maybe... This installment is 11K words consisting of two medium-length chapters (Ch 4-5); 4,700 and 6,300 words, respectively - the second broken into two distinct sections (although it's not labelled 5a and 5b).

A/N: On this Memorial Day, please join me in thanking the brave men and women of our armed forces - and their families - who have sacrificed so much in the defense of freedom and liberty around the world. Although this story plays fast and loose with the nature of the fictional versions of certain intelligence and law enforcement agencies, that respect and thanks extends to the less heralded members of our Intelligence Community and others who have made similar sacrifices.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership or claim is asserted or implied to the characters or story of the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ in this or any other part; additionally in this part no ownership or claim to Chumbawamba's _Tubthumping_ (its not _MY_ fault) or Metallica's _Wherever I May Roam_ (may as well use a piece of it again for a title) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part III: Jenny

* * *

.

004: To the Game You Stay a Slave

Interstate 5, Northbound, 30 miles north of Los Angeles; Wed Sept 19, 2007, 1:25 pm

.

The agent had hoped to tell her mother more of the situation. More of what she had done for her country. The sacrifices she had made. Something to make her mother proud of her. But she quickly realized that there was little she could share with her mother that fit the definition of '_things you hope for your children_'.

At least she had once attended a prestigious university and excelled there although her mother would find no trace of the girl she once knew in any graduation photo. And she had learned a trade. Of sorts. A trade at which her peers considered her among the absolute best. Although they attributed that honor to a variety of aliases and code names she had grown to hate rather than to her most frequently recycled name. It was an unfortunately necessary trade. She realized that now. But it was one of which she doubted her mother - or anyone, really - would be proud.

She had retrieved her Porsche from a warehouse-garage of an acquaintance early that morning. She had been fortunate to get on one of the few flights into Tijuana on Aeromexico from Shanghai Pudong hoping most of the attention of any pursuers would be divided or devoted entirely to the more traditional western routes. She had hidden her blonde hair under a dark wig from her kit that matched one of her passport photos. It helped her not stand out quite so much and she hid half of her face behind oversized but reasonably fashionable sunglasses.

The choice of route was a balancing act between two threats. The positive was that even the CIA - or any contacts within the CIA to whom Ryker might still have access - wouldn't be as inclined - or even _able_ \- to acquire the security footage from the Chinese government-controlled airport in trying to cast a surveillance net to determine her whereabouts.

The negative was that if she were caught in the People's Republic of China there was no possible way she could escape with the baby. If it were a problem with the usual airport presence of the PAP she could likely save herself but she would have to abandon the child. If it were agents from the MSS - and especially if they connected her to that nasty business in Shenzhen - it would simply be the end of her.

It turned out the baby herself was a better disguise than anything she could have thrown together. And that was a fortunate thing because caring for the baby had kept her attention divided from scanning for threats for the brief five hours they spent in the Shanghai International airport waiting for their flight. So much so that she was mildly startled when the time had passed and boarding for her flight to Tijuana was announced and the danger of such an impossible decision had passed.

Jesus Santos was the son of an old friend of her father although there had been some sort of a falling out many years ago. Due to her drastically in her appearance he took a little bit of convincing when she had first returned to his home headquarters near Tijuana several years ago. But when she called him 'Uncle Chuy' his face lit up with recognition. He was in that grey area of an old brother or a young uncle but, as his father treated her own father like one of his own sons during their brief time here years ago, she had settled on 'uncle'. And, even now, he persisted in calling her 'little Jenny'.

He hadn't questioned the need to hide a fairly valuable, high performance sports car for future use - and keep it in good condition and legal compliance for her return - nor would he inform her father or anyone else of her new passenger. Chuy's wife, Angelina, had given her a break from watching the baby to let her clean herself up. Unfortunately, the only change of clothes she had with her was mission gear and nothing Angelina had offered to lend to her would fit.

Angelina was as tiny as the agent remembered from her childhood despite giving birth to four children since then. Angelina had been seventeen when she herself was nearly fourteen and a younger her had idolized her for her beauty and confidence. Although Angelina and Chuy - twenty-two at the time and just establishing himself in preparation for taking over both his father's legal and illegal enterprises - weren't yet dating at the time, they had an aura of inevitability about them.

She had hoped that one day someone would look at her with the raw adoration with which she had seen Chuy look at Angelina. The way he still looked at her. And dared to dream that she would one day be as happy as Angelina seemed.

Be as happy as she seemed then when the younger incarnation of the agent had first known her. When Angelina had been working as a scout as much as a car boost, frequenting the ritzier nightclubs in LA and San Diego, occasionally as far away as Las Vegas for a specific target, where she planted short-range tracers on the more exotic cars driven by foolish men with too much money. Chuy always insisted on accompanying her, sometimes helping her extricate herself from the company of men who responded poorly to a reversal in the signals she was giving, and they got to know one another while they tailed their quarry to set up a later grab.

Sometimes opportunities presented themselves quickly and they dropped a new acquisition off at the family's San Diego garage before daybreak with her usually easily convincing him to let her drive the exotic car. Sometimes they went out for breakfast together with her still in her clubbing attire - relentlessly teasing him and drawing stares at the seeming couple from other patrons until he visibly blushed to her delight. Pretending they were dating or enjoying a meal after an evening together until one inevitable morning when both were true.

Or her younger self would have hoped to be as happy as Angelina seemed now, having left all that behind - except for the man who adored her - in favor of raising a family with him. The agent was exhausted from the attention the baby required at regular intervals day or night and from their escape from Eastern Europe. The result had been a handful of fractured hours of sleep over the past three days but she somehow wasn't tired watching the scene before her.

Angelina looked elegant and graceful in a simple, white sundress holding court for her own youngest son and daughter playing around her, constantly seeking her approval for one thing or another. The older boy and girl were kicking a weathered soccer ball between them and she periodically reminded them to include their younger siblings, deftly kicking the ball back to her oldest son and daughter after the younger two had fumbled about for a bit or lost interest. All this while she fed a bottle of formula to the baby girl temporarily in her care, cradling her effortlessly in one arm as she cooed and soothed her.

The couple had embraced the absurd theme of Chuy's full name coupled with hers when they started having children, giving the whole family similarly angelic or saintly names and they lived up to them on this visit. Criminals or not, they were good people. Despite her hastily made plans, she entertained the idea of leaving the baby with them. She knew she would be loved here but it would invite too many questions.

Instead she accepted Angelina's enthusiastic advice, misguided congratulations and dozens of used baby items of which she said she had no further need. She said four was enough but Chuy's unsolicited "but you never know" resulted in one of those transcendent looks and secret smiles between the two of them. A look that prompted her to only accept the items for which she had an immediate use. They even provided an old infant car seat that had to be wedged into the front passenger seat of the tiny sports coupe.

She could just as easily have stored her car at the CIA's Los Angeles substation as Chuy's chop shop but was glad she hadn't. Graham must know that she often popped back up on the radar in or around San Diego but, if so, he also must have, somewhat uncharacteristically, made the simplistic assumption that she had a vague nostalgic affinity for the area or even old friends she visited.

As the place where he had first interacted with her it may have been a common assumption for most recruits so she tried to spread her footprint around to avoid any concentrated scrutiny and used the opportunity to maintain her network of contacts. Besides doing late night drive-bys of her mothers house - never able to bring herself to stop, much less knock on the door - this was the reason. Like a few other cities throughout North America, she had people there or nearby. Old contacts that she knew she could trust or at least knew how _far_ she could trust.

But Chuy and his family had seen the baby and would have to be stricken from that list. As always, she disgusted herself by even entertaining the tactical option of orphaning their four children. The kids were strictly off limits as far as she was concerned but the _option_ still existed for someone somewhere. Making the children untouchable meant that there was a scenario more extreme than this one where the parents were not. And that realization sickened her.

She told herself it was just part of a checklist, a mechanical process, something that someone far more twisted than her had conceived, only part of her consciousness due to relentless training, as she waved goodbye to the enthusiastically waving family. A beautiful, perfect family she had just consciously - if automatically - weighed the tactical advantages and disadvantages of killing some or all of. She wondered when even _considering_ such options for even the briefest amount of time had started making any degree of sense to her.

As the woman and child later crossed the border uneventfully, it was just one more reason for her to begin the mental process of erasing Chuy and his family from her memory. Allocating them to the closed file of the now non-existent Nicole Schroeder.

.

* * *

That was who she had been several hours ago - a woman crossing the border with her infant daughter. Now she was attempting to complete the process of safely locking away any memory of the mother she once had and the child she had known for three days and risked everything to provide with a new start.

It wasn't quite as effective as it had been earlier in her career but it still felt as though it had all happened to someone else.

Embracing the role of a carefree, motherless, childless woman - two of the three being true - the agent thought she might just keep driving north for a while. Maybe veer west until the world became water and drive lazily up the PCH and spend some time in San Francisco or Monterey. She was trained to function on little sleep but utter exhaustion was starting to set in.

Their route had started in Budapest with an early morning drive to Vienna, and subsequent flights to Istanbul, Bangkok, Shanghai and Tijuana. But the roar of the engine and the wind in her hair energized her just enough to become hopeful she could stay awake until she could find somewhere to collapse and let the events of the last few days fully wash over and through her. A hot bath and a long nap were competing for the top priority in her life right now. Sleeping in that hot bath was looking like a fantastic compromise if not an inevitability.

She loved to drive but hadn't seen her car for over six months. It was her first and last splurge purchase - one of the first 997s available - when she realized how much pay she had accumulated living basically expense free with no fixed address while on assignment after assignment for several years. The realization that she hardly ever got to drive the car and that there was really no good place to keep it had prevented her from splurging on anything else - and Chuy had always said he could arranged for a car anywhere in North America with two days notice - a crutch she may still have at her disposal as long as she didn't deal with him directly. She smiled when she noticed that Chuy had updated her stereo without any mention of doing so and resigned herself to the idea of having to store the car at a local substation when she was next deployed. And then wondered if she should even keep it considering she no longer had any ties to the area.

She had achieved her primary goal of putting some distance between herself and San Diego, just leaving Los Angeles behind her half an hour ago, so she reactivated her official encrypted phone and it rang almost immediately. It was one of those rare occasions where she had to think for a split-second about how to answer.

"Walker...secure."

"Damn it, Walker. Where the fuck have you been for the past four days?" She immediately registered several things: the confirmation that her name had, in fact, been restored to its default setting of Sarah Walker, that Graham was pissed enough to dispense with the formality of confirming his line was encrypted and that someone in the background was calling out to Graham - probably an analyst providing her location. That last thought was quickly confirmed. "And what are you doing in California? You should have reported directly to me when you reentered the country."

"Sorry, sir. I decided to take a roundabout way back to the States and lay some false trails to throw Ryker off until I knew what I was dealing with. Figured LA was as unhelpful of a data point as any major city." This was about as true as she was sorry - which was to say not at all of either. And this line of questioning was making her think about the woman and child she could still envision in the rear-view mirror, sabotaging her efforts to compartmentalize.

She had been surprised how little attention was paid to the small child while traveling commercial. If you weren't paying for a seat, the airline didn't seem to care very much. She had scrambled to get high-quality passports for the little girl that matched some of her own from a somewhat shady contact in Vienna just in case someone had given it any amount of scrutiny but she needn't have worried. With similar brazenness, Ryker could have taken the baby anywhere in the world just as easily as she had. She had stolen the first car she found with a serviceable baby seat, actively avoiding rail stations and airports where Ryker may have informants or associates.

She had burned three of her unsponsored identities to get herself and the baby back to California, only superficially adopting each cover. It had always been easier to put on a new identity that Graham had worked up for her with a detailed personality profile. They had worked on it very early in her training. When they put in the small additional effort of walking through a few key parameters of a cover it was like flipping a switch. More immersive than she had been capable of as a child. As though she were playing a version of herself she had only just discovered.

She had trained herself to do the same thing on the fly out of necessity later in her training. But without a specific character template she sometimes found it harder to stifle her unproductive, scattered thoughts and make the necessary mental adjustments on the fly to...whatever she was without such character sketches.

Whatever she was underneath all the secret identities.

Whatever was left.

She was sure it had not escaped Graham's attention that none of her sponsored aliases had been flagged by The Agency and she wasn't going to point it out. She still had several more she was saving for the proverbial rainy day that he did not need to know about. People didn't usually survive rainy days in her business.

She decided to test the waters. She _had_ been off grid for several days which couldn't have looked very good considering what had resulted in her being dispatched to Budapest in the first place. And since her compartmentalization thus far of her recent experiences wasn't holding up very well she should determine how necessary it was. "Speaking of which, just what _am_ I dealing with? How much do you know about this so-called mission, sir?"

"Look, I know what Ryker made you do. I know everything." The Director answered smoothly and calmly.

She doubted that was entirely true but assumed that it _did_ mean that someone from The Agency had picked up Norman, aka the hacker calling himself 'Spider', and had fully vetted the same story he had told to her. It was a bit of an operational nightmare. Now that she knew what Ryker had been after she doubted that he had fully evaluated or cared about the repercussions of her eliminating half of the leaders of the Hungarian underworld. There was a power vacuum that would be filled and she cared about what that might mean to US interests in the region only in a purely academic way. But Graham was usually _very_ interested in those types of outcomes and the resultant political pressures he would have to deal with.

"I was just obeying orders." she responded as vaguely as she could and waited for the thunder.

"There's no need to worry about that now. Where's the package?"

_No need to worry?_ How very unlike Graham. He worried about everything. She expected him to focus on the ramifications of what she had done on the stability of the region or at least her failure to identify the rogue nature of the assignment. Some technical aspect over any importance attributed to the individuals who had been murdered or kidnapped. But to dismiss the situation entirely was unusual.

Something was amiss and she suspected she had made the right call by opting not to offer up details so she continued to probe. "If I had the package in my possession, then what?"

_The Package._ Repeating the euphemism that Ryker had used to describe the tiny, perfect soul who had forced her to look far too deeply at her own actually hurt to say. Leaving her mother behind was so fresh a wound that she hadn't even been aware that leaving the child had inflicted another. Having seen Angelina with her own children, this new wound was surprisingly just as deep.

She had a fleeting rogue thought that she should have kept her and ran away from all of this madness...and she stamped that thought out as quickly as she could. The child was much better off far from someone like her.

"CIA would take it into custody and then…" _It?!_

"Could you guarantee its protection?" she uncharacteristically interjected. There was a slight possibility that Graham was keeping things vague for security purposes - he _was_ the most paranoid person she had ever met. She had feigned disinterested detachment potentially encouraging its use - but it still required a conscious effort on her part to resist the urge to contemptuously emphasize the impersonal pronoun he had chosen for that beautiful baby girl.

And she still wanted to know what, if any, plans Graham had for the baby. His placating tone alone, rather than reprimanding her for interrupting, was worrisome.

"You know I can't make guarantees. The CIA keeps records of these kind of things. Records that a man like Ryker might be able to get his hands on. Who knows what he would do. He's a wild card..."

She had cringed at the mention of a wild card and was struck silent for a moment. That was once one of her many handles. Occasionally it still was. No one knew exactly how many agents Graham had recruited into his special project but some overheard call signs, gossip travelled and many liked to joke - far away from Graham's earshot - that he wasn't playing with a full deck. Even so, no one joked about the call sign 'Wild Card'.

Due to some problems with fully executing her orders early in her career, she had begun with an unimpressive designation of Seven of Spades based purely on raw ability. Only after she made her deal and began cleaning up messes for him did she eventually work her way up to more dramatic designations, later moving off the scale entirely into the role of Wild Card. When Graham said those two little words together and a folder found its way into her hands, people were about to die.

And there had been a lot of folders.

But she was also no fool. She knew someone offering an out when she saw it. Graham's response indicated that Ryker was still out there somewhere. How long he could remain at large was a question mark and she hated question marks. But he would have to stay off the grid or possibly do freelance work or imbed himself in some organization that would make going after him too costly in both money and lives. Any of those options would take time and effort and consume his focus for the conceivable future. It did trouble her that he couldn't guarantee protection. Just what the hell was going on that made the CIA unable to protect a civilian from their own rogue agents?

It was apparent to her that Graham was fully aware that she had taken the child and found somewhere to keep her safe. He had no way of knowing whether she had done so somewhere in Europe, somewhere in the US or somewhere in between. She saw no reason to change that or clarify any part of it. So she reluctantly closed the mental vault that held the precious memories of finally seeing her mother one last time and the baby girl that had shown her some light in the darkness and would give her mother another chance to raise a daughter she could be proud of. The chance she had taken from her mother when she was seven.

"... Agent Walker? ...Sarah?"

Graham's voice roused her from her musings and she emerged convinced she had made the right decision. So she did the one thing she did even better than what she had done in Budapest.

She lied.

She found the lie in the truth and sold the hell out of her new version of reality. Convincing even herself that she was unaffected and turning away from thoughts of the road not travelled.

"I'm not in possession of the package, Director. Must be somewhere else."

"Very well." Graham had no interest in the child herself considering what he was currently dealing with. And quite frankly he was impressed, but not terribly surprised, that his agent was able to flee with a small child in tow, evade capture and find a safe haven for the child in such a short period of time. He also briefly entertained the idea that the child had simply been disposed of but didn't think this particular protégé was quite that far gone just yet.

But this was all just humoring her while he assessed whether she was still _his_ agent and hadn't, as he had feared during her absence, gone rogue with Larkin and somehow been part of what happened last night. As it seemed he often did when it came to her, he had made a snap decision about how best to use her as soon as her location had been established.

Conveniently enough, her route had left her perfectly positioned to help him with his current predicament. He had the disadvantage of having very few qualified agents currently available in-country and the two available in LA were less than ideal. He had dragged his feet on calling either in for a briefing at the substation in LA until he had complete intel and he had just learned enough about Larkin's transmission for him to put two-and-two together. This unexpected serendipity would allow him to order both agents to stand down and avoid the substation while his best option got whatever support she needed.

This way he could still beat Beckman's attack dog to the field of operations with an attack dog of his own. Something that would not have been possible had she reported to Langley after the events of last night. One of his two agents might have been able to deal with Casey once he got his team in place but wouldn't have been nearly as artful about getting the answers he needed as Walker. And he really didn't need to start a full-scale war between agencies in the heart of Los Angeles.

He was relatively certain Agent Walker would want to handle this one personally anyway once he had fully explained the situation.

"As unfortunate as this business with Ryker is, I need you back into action right away. I have something that requires immediate attention in LA and your position indicates that you are the closest operative I have that I can trust with something this important."

She was relieved to hear him say that at least _he_ still trusted her. Trusted her with something big enough for him to press his luck and the limits of his authority with a domestic assignment. Sleep would have to wait. If she could pull off this urgent assignment - whatever it was - maybe he would be able to convince any other bigwigs who had taken an unhealthy interest in certain personas of hers just because of their affiliation with a rogue agent. "Credentials?"

"No time. I need you in there now. Just go in as Sarah Walker. It should be a quick in and out; twenty-four hours max. There's no need to establish a cover."

"What's the objective?"

"That's the bad news. We finally figured out what Bryce has been up to." Graham uncharacteristically sighed in anticipation of delivering the final piece of information he had yet to share.

She chuckled inaudibly at what she misinterpreted as exasperation in her superior's tone. Bryce had that effect on a lot of people. "And what half-assed excuse has he cooked up for where he's been for the past two..._three_...months?"

"Agent...Sarah..." There was that _tone_ again. What would have passed for compassion to anyone who didn't know him concerned her as he switched to address her by a more informal name for the second time in this conversation. It wasn't unheard of for him to address her informally but it was rare. And he always referred to her as Agent Walker or or 'Agent' coupled with the last name of her current alias in front of other agents. And he was consistent about it. She had also never known him to be so familiar about another agent in her presence.

Her frequent partner was a constant thorn in Graham's side and Graham had always - _always_ \- without fail - referred to him as Agent Larkin, or simply Larkin. At least in front of her.

The hum of the engine and the rush of the wind it indirectly created were the only sounds as she quietly waited for the other shoe to drop with her hands at 10 and 2 watching the road ahead and anticipating the moves of the erratic drivers around her.

She felt a disquieting sense of dread as the pieces started to assemble in her mind when she realized that Graham had just referred to him simply as Bryce.

And then he did it again.

"...Bryce is dead."

.

* * *

005: Run, Rabbit, Run

San Diego, CA; Friday, March 20, 1998, 4:25 pm

.

Jenny Burton - a senior at James Buchanan High School - was driving home with the top down and the radio up with her hands at 10 and 2 watching the road ahead and anticipating the moves of the erratic drivers around her. She loved her bright yellow Volkswagen Rabbit even though it was older than she was. She knew it had been a bribe when they had moved here and her father had given it to her but she now accepted it as hers. She was always extra cautious because, along with the car, he had given her a drivers license and registration and the only thing they had in common with Jenny Burton was a passable resemblance to the girl in the picture on the license. She had three more drivers licenses in a pouch inside a slit in the passenger seat upholstery.

Jenny was enjoying letting the wind blow wildly through her hair and looking forward to spring break. She had just finished her mid-term exams and felt pretty confident she had done well in all of them. Last year she had come in without proper records and had to take several courses well below her level of ability until her records came through. Meaning until her father came through with official looking enough fakes.

They had been particularly reluctant to let her take two foreign languages so she simply refused to speak English for several weeks. Switching to Spanish was so commonplace that some people didn't even notice at first. As soon as they realized her proficiency, she switched to French. She was nearly as good at French and she had fewer people to impress. Both teachers thought it was delightful but the student's reactions were not as enthusiastic when they were then encouraged to speak only in the language they were learning during class.

Her math and science results were only slightly above average but she was able to test out of any further requirements in either for her senior year. Her father must have come through with some pretty decent records for her, leaving only a couple of areas requiring additional credits, because she was able to avoid those less preferred subjects and was pretty well set for her approaching graduation.

She had played violin twice in her life previously. Once for nearly half of a school year where she quickly became reasonably good and again for two months some time later which was more than enough time to restore her proficiency. She decided to pick it up again over the summer to fulfill an arts requirement in her final year, becoming quite good rather quickly. She had always enjoyed learning about history and was able to test into an Advanced Placement class which meant her school day in her senior year was made up of three AP classes (world history, Spanish and French), orchestra, English literature and Physical Education.

As she drove home she considered what she might do with a week alone in case her father didn't come through. She hadn't seen him in a few weeks but he had promised to be back for spring break. Maybe he had something fun planned. It would be nice to spend a little time together to help her decide what she wanted to do after graduation.

Things were getting better between them when he was home - which was somewhat infrequently but she could look out for herself. At least he had helped her get set up here and came through on his promise of helping her establish the 'Jenny Burton' identity needed to attend school.

She didn't know how he pulled it off but for once he had kept most of his promises. He must have finally seen her point of view on the events that had led them to this point and clearly felt some guilt over how she had perceived things. He even sheepishly offered to set her up with a clean identity in case she wanted to strike out on her own.

But he had also suggested that maybe they could make a go of it, maybe even legitimately for a while, as Jack and Jenny Burton. Implicitly admitting that life as criminals might mot be the best plan for a man with a young daughter was a big step for him. Even as he acknowledged to himself that it was his fault she had to grow up so fast, he wanted her to stay at least until she was a little older. To tell the truth, Jenny was hoping to spend some time enjoying her youth even though their acceleration of her life on paper gave her lots of options. That had been the whole point of this failed high school experiment after all.

He said he would wrap up what he was working on in LA and between that haul and their emergency stash they could last a couple of years no matter what happened. Enough time to at least carry on until she truly reached her eighteenth birthday two years from this coming June. She was considering the option of leveraging the eighteenth birthday of 'Jenny' coming up this May - the date they had long ago established as her new birthday for her last eight birthdays only recently changing the year. He had also proposed possibly going to see her mother once her _true_ self was no longer a minor. An idea that absolutely terrified her.

He was trying. He really was. Ever since she had demanded to be left out of his cons and to be allowed to try to have some normalcy in her life he had tried to give her options and make up for what she now knew to have been a misunderstanding that had caused the rift between them. They settled down in one place. Or rather she did. Dad was gone more than he was around. He had gotten the braces for her teeth they had discussed since she was twelve. He made her over two years older on paper and no one seemed to question it. That meant she would soon get to choose how she wanted to live. She got to attend a normal high school as a normal girl and was even starting to befriend a few other girls last year as what would be her junior year came to a close.

As she drove, Jenny rolled her eyes when she heard the dedication on the radio. Football season had been over for months and she smiled to herself when she thought maybe she should ask Heather Chandler whether she had dedicated the song to the whole varsity team because she couldn't remember which ones she had fucked.

Of course she never would and her smile faded as she realized that. Even though evidence of the reason for Heather's popularity was tipping the balance more toward well-established fact than mere rumor, Heather would just turn the tables focusing on the fact that Jenny didn't have any boys that were interested in her. Heather had seen to that.

And it wasn't just Heather. All those girls were allied against her now, ultimately for things she didn't even realize she had done. Jenny's stunt to be allowed to take French had unknowingly taken attention away from Heather and exposed her as not being the star pupil she had been before she was forced to actually _use_ French in conversation. She hadn't said anything at the time but she had been embarrassed and hadn't forgotten.

When Jenny had taken up violin again she hadn't known that Heather played as well and was second chair. When Jenny practiced a bit and auditioned over the summer she didn't even know until the school year started that she had bumped Heather down. But Heather knew.

Late in the previous year, girls she thought were or might become her friends - or at least didn't hate her - had encouraged Jenny to try out for the cheer leading squad. She had gone away with her father early in the summer to help him with what he described as a minor con setting up an office in LA as some sort of financial consultant and a small apartment where he had been spending most weeknights.

When Jenny had come back and gone to try-outs late in the summer she knew she had done at least as well as most of the other girls. But the new captain of the squad had final say and ripped her to pieces. Given a little bit of power, Heather was determined not to let Jenny show her up again and to pay her back for what she regarded as previous slights. She was the new queen bee and all of the other girls had fallen in line. None of her so-called friends had backed her up.

And that was why she was looking forward to spring break. Heather and her cronies had teamed up on her within the first few weeks and recruited their equally popular boyfriends to do the same. With the popular kids constantly teasing her no one else dared to stick up for her, hang out with her or even eat lunch with her. Most joined in to try to curry favor with the top of the JBHS Cougars food chain. Boys who had at least been nice to her last year - even if none of them were actually interested in dating her - now wouldn't even speak to her. She had previously been considering trying out for track but, with most of the boys track team also being on the football team, she realized quickly how big a mistake that would be.

She had become a pariah.

But spring break meant a whole week without dealing with any of that garbage and in twelve weeks she would be done with all of them forever. She had stuck quietly and diligently to her school work and began to entertain the idea of starting to work with her father again. It would all have been so much worse if she hadn't known that she had some options. She and her father had even discussed possibly starting out at a community college to see if she was interested in trying to get into a four-year school under the clean identity he had set up for her though he encouraged her to take some time off before doing so.

He had no doubts she could work her way into a great school. But he wasn't worried about academics, he just didn't think his little girl was ready for the social aspects that he fixated on. He knew he was probably being foolish and overprotective and really had no right to be either given what had broken their partnership over a year ago. He knew he had been a horrible father.

Maybe, just like over eight years ago, he just wasn't willing to let go of her. Unlike then, he thought maybe he would be able to be less selfish - be more attentive and more supportive. Rather than long periods where he threw himself into working on some con because he couldn't look at his daughter without being overwhelmed by the guilt of the circumstances that led him to take her from her mother.

Unable to part with her and unable to embrace her.

Jenny decided to sing along with Heather's catchy but stupid song considering and smiling at the fact that soon she wouldn't have to put up with Heather or her cronies anymore. She _had_ been knocked down but now had some hope of getting up again.

But as she pulled onto her street she saw the small army of county police and ATF officers milling about the yard with the lights on at least four vehicles flashing. There was a nondescript SUV as well and a stoic caucasian man - built like a tank and dressed in a black suit and dark glasses - coming down her front steps and looking her way before speaking into the cuff of his sleeve. A man she had noticed on the grounds of her school recently.

All she could think was that this was all her fault. They had never stayed in one place for so long. She thought it was what she wanted but the last few months had been miserable. Her father told her that she deserved that diploma, that she had earned it. Even though they could have easily faked her records if she ever needed a piece of paper. She had stayed to try to do something the right way even if she had been ready to abandon this whole experiment months ago. This was the result of her foolishness.

They always had plans for something like this - here in San Diego it was a stash well off the walking trails in the wooded part of a nearby park - but never had to use them except for the few times when he had simply disappeared for too long. There had been a lot of near misses but he had never actually been _caught_ before. Because she had always been watching his back before.

He had done all this for her. Settled them down, tried to give her a taste of a normal life, tried to prepare them for an attempt at a legitimate lifestyle based on his recent comments. Tried to make up for what a shit father he said he had been for most of their travels together. For her. And look where it landed him.

When she saw the officers escorting her handcuffed father out of the house and into the backseat of one of the police cars she pulled one of her knives from under her seat. She knew there was only one thing left that she could do.

So she ran. As fast as she could.

.

* * *

San Diego, CA; Friday, March 20, 1998, 5:05 pm

.

It had been a long time since Langston Graham had found himself skulking through the woods hunting another human being.

He was being cautious in his approach but not for the usual reasons. She had a rare gift and it was a skill missing among his other recruits and research subjects. He needed a linguist for his project. Not someone who had learned one or two languages through years of study, hard effort and immersion in a foreign culture but someone who could process languages and the learning of them almost intuitively.

He had been watching her for years. She was a child prodigy with an unharnessed intellect but no one but himself and a couple of his agents seemed to know or suspect it. She should have been in some sort of school for the gifted - which would have made her infinitely easier to keep tabs on, if harder to extricate, now that they were ready for her - but she was instead criss-crossing North America with her father.

They kept losing track of her but started having more success by tracking _him_. He was a proficient con artist but far too ambitious for his own good. That ambition had eventually become more aptly described as reckless and, more recently, downright sloppy.

The common element for the first four years of their surveillance had been the little girl lingering in the background. An agent had first noticed her in '92 while on an unrelated assignment as he scouted a market in Nogales. The agent had given a suspected age range but Graham kept what he had since discovered about the girl to himself - that his surveillance of her had begun when she was actually ten. Her blonde hair had stood out enough to draw the agent's attention, her behavior made him curious and he quickly realized what she was doing on the second day.

The agent had once done something similar himself - deliberately converting the book learning of a foreign language into a comfortable, functional skill through premeditated personal interactions.

She seemed to have a plan and approached each day working on a certain set of skills and adjusting based on her learnings. He could tell from the seemingly random flow of her conversation topics that she was targeting specific types of discussions with native speakers. Phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics - the daily improvement he observed in all of the five components of language was staggeringly efficient.

The CIA's carefully designed immersion program was similar and probably more robust, but her approach had a lot of shortcuts. It was as though she had studied the CIA's program and tailored it to herself. Such intuitive ability for an obvious infiltration skill was worthy of report and the agent was effusive in his praise of what he had observed. After his supplemental report was received and his original mission was concluded his primary mission became observing her.

She was a tiny, scrawny thing. The agent had estimated her to be maybe as young as nine years old but possibly an underdeveloped twelve year old. She was left to her own devices alone in the marketplace more often than not but everyone seemed to know not to accost her. The agent once saw a man grab her by the upper arm but the man cringed and yelped as he withdrew his hand and his friends laughed at him.

The girl just smiled at them all over her shoulder as she continued on her way. The agent was not certain whether he had truly seen a glint of metal during the interaction but the man's forearm was certainly bleeding.

His surveillance continued for three weeks until he lost her briefly in the crowd. He had the fleeting thought that she was now so easily confused for a native speaker that if she had changed her appearance she would be invisible. When he neared the end of the blocks-long row of merchant stalls - still surrounded by market-goers and peering over them on his tip-toes - he saw her.

She was standing in the doorway at the top of the front steps of the church across the street staring knowingly directly back at him. She smiled her crooked, toothy grin at him and gave a small finger-waggling wave before disappearing into the crowd again. She had been waving goodbye. He never saw her again.

The agent's commendation for identifying a potential high-value asset was offset by his reprimand for being detected by a pre-teen girl. But he made up for that mistake with his knowledge gleaned from vendors and other locals that the girl was traveling with her father.

Once that connection had been made between the two, and the girl's father had been identified, there had been light surveillance devoted to locating and tracking them ever since through a seemingly endless string of identities and con jobs of mixed success. Whenever the man currently calling himself Jack Burton popped on his radar, Deputy Director Graham's first question was always the same: _Where's the girl?_

Only recently had the answer become one of uncertainty. As always, the key had been the sloppiness of her father. 'Jack Burton' had run afoul of recently immigrated small-time crooks trying to carve out a foothold in Los Angeles. And he had interjected himself into an ill-fated deal between that group and a larger, much more well-established faction.

Graham was on good terms with one of the FBI agents on the case and had learned a few things. That Burton was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had changed his M.O. somewhat by deliberately keeping his hunting grounds so far from his home. And he had some prior dealings with the crooks the FBI and ATF were investigating but nothing that warranted their full attention. Or prevented Graham from interfering to exploit the situation.

One of Graham's two men had spotted her at her home and he sent both highly proficient former field agents to tail her and call in her location. He wanted to be the one who approached her but he was glad he didn't have to run her down himself. She had next to no technique but still ran like a fucking deer.

It wasn't often that Deputy Director Graham was surprised by anyone. Both he and the two agents with him had been sure that the girl couldn't possibly maintain her blistering pace when she took off into the woods and were surprised when she had. There hadn't been anything like that documented in her dossier since they had found her here in San Diego.

There was no indication of any special athletic ability whatsoever. She seemed to be acing her classes with minimal effort and her only extracurricular activity was music. She had tried out for the cheerleading squad last year but had not been accepted - creating the assumption that she simply wasn't athletic enough - and there was no indication that she socialized much with any of her peers ever since.

He found her using her bare hands to frantically dig up what must have been her and her father's stash of get away money and read a note inside the box. She surprised him yet again when a small but sturdy knife embedded itself in a tree inches from his head. He needed to take command of the situation so, after an appreciative huff, he acknowledged the feat with a condescending air and smooth, unimpressed tone speaking just two words.

"Nice toss."

It honestly had amused him as much as it surprised him - this frightened little rabbit launching a knife at him - revealing that it had longer and sharper teeth and claws than expected - or at least playacting as if she did. But he decided then and there that if she were to surprise him a third time, it would be on his terms.

She was street smart and resourceful not just pure, unfocused intelligence. He could tell from her facial structure that she didn't have to be as homely as she appeared - a side effect, he assumed, of both being raised by a man and simply not caring what others thought of her.

She was more fit and agile than he had expected based on their recent surveillance. It was no small accomplishment, especially for a civilian with no targeted training, to sprint nearly a mile and then turn and launch a knife with power and accuracy. Her reflexes and proficiency, if not technique, at that specific skill were already world class. He smiled more broadly as he watched the knife wobble from the force of the throw that had buried it in the tree bark as he considered what she could become with the proper training.

He was glad he hadn't farmed out this grab and had been here to witness it. He wouldn't have believed it had he been told - not enough to make the change in his course of action that he was now considering. She had far more untapped potential than even he had realized. In the few moments it took for the knife to fully come to rest he had decided that she wouldn't just be a research subject.

He could make her into an agent.

"Who are you?" The girl interrupted his thoughts and he contemplated how best to proceed. He could see her trembling, clutching the box to her chest and considering whether or not to make a mad dash away from him. They would have to work on that.

But she was working the options, assessing and calculating even though she was clearly terrified. She was no killer or she would currently be cleaning his blood from her blade. But he could work on that too. All he needed was the proper leverage.

So he began to assess her. To systematically feel her out and see which buttons worked best when pushed.

"I'm the man who put your father in prison. The question is: who are you? In San Diego, you go by Jenny Burton. In Wisconsin it's Katie O'Connell. In Cleveland it's Rebecca Franco. Funny thing is when I looked at your birth certificate..."

"I get your point. What do you want?" _Defiant, trying to wrest back some control of the situation..._Graham continued to assess her believing, incorrectly, that he had uncovered all her secrets. He knew all about the recent changes to her birth certificate. He had the one that came before. He hadn't overlooked the change in birth year. He just didn't care.

"Your father scammed some pretty dangerous people. I saved his life by putting him in jail."

"Well, don't expect a thank-you note." _Antagonize and read the reaction, hide your own true reactions..._yes, this decision was looking better and better...

"I can save your life too." She clearly read that as a threat of imprisonment - exactly as he had intended. Slowly extending her arms in position to be handcuffed but subtly shifting her stance. Now unarmed, she was trying to draw him in and attack him in some way. He couldn't help but smile at the raw audacity. Exactly what she planned to do next was a mystery and he was half tempted to play along to find out.

Instead he verbally retreated to draw her back in, physically holding his ground but softening his words. "No, not that way. Your dad trained you pretty well. The CIA can do even better. You like names so much, hmm? What do you think about Sarah Walker?"

"And who's Sarah Walker supposed to be?"

Graham hadn't really thought much about that yet. It was just a name he recalled from a few preset identities earmarked for recruiting purposes. Completely meaningless but he continued his sales pitch.

"The answer to _that_ question is yet to be written, but fundamentally..." Graham paused as he grasped the handle of the knife and wiggled it free of the tree "...she's someone who doesn't want to share her father's fate. A life of crime only ends one of two ways. You don't want to end up dead or in jail...you don't want that for yourself..._or_ your father. Do you?"

She stiffened, at her own possible fate or that of her father he hadn't been sure until he read her reaction to each. _There's the soft spot._ Graham could see that had hit the mark. So he suspected this latest half-assed attempt at living a normal life was her idea; attendance of high school while her father continued his grifter ways hinting at some sort of an attempt to improve herself. Indications of morality he could possibly exploit.

He further suspected the glimmer of hope in her eyes was related to the comment about her father not ending up in jail rather than herself. She still seemed to be under the delusion that she could escape his grasp.

He chose to try the high road first, the noble motivations before grabbing that soft spot and squeezing, so he broke out an old favorite as he weighed the knife in his right hand.

"The CIA can build on what you can already do. I have the authority to recruit you into an elite program. Give you a life, a purpose. You can have all the excitement and adventure you've had on your best cons with your father but do it while serving a higher purpose than yourself. You can become an agent of the US government. Serve the greater good."

The smirk that put on her face made Graham realize that she wasn't going to naively buy just any story and her response confirmed it. "What if Sarah Walker thinks you're full of shit?"

Graham was outwardly non-plussed but also no longer willing to dance this dance with a teenage girl. One pretending to be nearly eighteen but who he knew to be two years younger. She could choose to cooperate or not, but either way, he was at least getting what he came for no matter how young she was. He needed her skills and in six years of tracking her, he had yet to encounter anyone close to her ability. It had to be her. And she had already unwittingly signaled at least a willingness to take on an identity he prescribed by hypothetically asking questions as Sarah Walker.

But pretending he was here out of the goodness of his heart wasn't something this daughter of a con artist was going to blindly accept. Better to pull his best lever in an obvious way and let her appreciate the gravity of her situation while still making it sound like a reasonable request.

"Well, its all true. Adventure...Excitement...Traveling the world on the government's dime. But if that's not good enough for Sarah Walker, she also realizes that even though your father is going to prison, that doesn't mean that the men he conned can't reach him there..."

Graham paused deliberately as he saw the defiant girl who had gotten caught up in playing their little game of cat and mouse remember why she had fled in the first place.

And remember that she was the mouse.

He let the thought marinate for a moment longer as he drew a plain looking business card from an inner jacket pocket and tested the sharpness of the knife. He easily slit the center of the card with the point of the blade and slowly slid the card all the way to the knife's grip - the wound in the card widening as he plunged deeper - before continuing, raising his head abruptly from his strange task as though the thought had just occurred to him.

"Wouldn't it be a special type of karma if they actually ended up in the _same_ prison? Your father and the men he betrayed? The ones hunting him?" His attention returned to the card impaled on the knife as he continued with a shrug of his shoulders. "I put him in the safest place in the world...for now. But in a few months..."

The defiant girl's misty eyes gave it away. He knew he had found her weakness but she tried another feeble feint.

"What makes you think I care? I've got our money. Maybe all I care about is whether you're going to try to stop me."

"If I were going to _stop_ you..." _thunk!_

With a compact but powerful whipping motion from toes to fingertips ending with a flick of his wrist the knife had been returned to its owner, buried nearly an inch deep in the tree that marked her father's emergency funds. Graham wasn't far removed from field service and stayed in practice. He had thrown her knife hard enough to overcome the additional resistance of the card still seated where the blade ended.

Her fear became more obvious as she stared wide-eyed at this mysterious man offering to be some sort of benefactor while also contemplating the compact nature of the throw compared to her more showy overhand motion, the deliberately poorly veiled threat to her father and whatever the card contained in a sickening whirl of inevitable outcomes.

Now that he had her complete attention, Graham straightened his suit jacket sharply by its quarters and maintained his cool, steady tone feeling more comfortable that he could insinuate himself further into her reluctant confidence by giving her the illusion of a choice rather than demanding she leave with him immediately as he continued.

"...we wouldn't be talking. But if you want to walk away by all means, walk away. Your high school graduation is in twelve weeks. Over those twelve weeks there will be raids and arrests. Arraignments and legal maneuvering. Bail hearings and discovery motions. If a young woman calling herself Sarah Walker isn't at the reception desk at the address on that card at 9:00 am on June 15th it will become known that the man calling himself Jack Burton is the chief witness against the Leonov crime organization and that he is being moved to protective custody."

The girls features were pinched. She knew she was trapped. In more ways than one. And she was doing her level best not to tear up as Graham set the hook completely. "Of course, your father doesn't really know anything of value to us, so when we later remove him from the witness list they _may_ feel a great swell of affection thinking he has refused to betray them - or at least refused to betray them in open court. But they'll probably still be far too pissed about the $200,000 or so that he stole from them to let that affection get the better of them. But you can feel free to take _that_ cash..." he gestured to the box clutched under her left arm "...find some new identity - go on with your life - and figure out for yourself what you want to do with the rest of it."

It had not been lost on her from the beginning of this conversation that the government had been tracking her for some time - or had at least done quite a lot of digging - and would likely continue doing both until they got whatever it was they wanted. They could invalidate her current identity making something as suddenly trivial as a high school diploma into a worthless piece of parchment. Her father killed in prison. Herself living on the streets. Again.

She considered the likely events and her limited options - a box of cash under her left arm and the fingers of her right hand ticking against her thigh - as she just stared back at him for nearly a minute before asking quietly, "And what if Sarah Walker _is_ at that address?"

Graham's disposition lightened almost comically as he took a single step forward and his posture changed with hands turned out in an inviting pose at the question indicating his preferred outcome. "Then she exists only within those walls. Maybe at other times if later situations dictate it. Only when I _say_ she's Sarah Walker. But that same life of adventure awaits. For the most part we'll find plenty of new Jennys and Katies and Rebeccas for her to play. She'll be trained by the best in everything for which she shows any sort of aptitude. And then...well...we'll just see what she becomes."

"I mean, what about Sarah Walker's father?" Her voice had trembled slightly. For all her bluster, he knew he had her now. And letting her come to him was a small but significant way to diffuse some of the animosity of using someone she cared about to manipulate her. But he would worry about that once preparations had been completed and once she chose the easy way or the hard way.

"Well, _Jenny_...she doesn't _have_ a father. With the sorts of adventures Sarah is going to be up to it just wouldn't be safe for him or for anyone else from her old life. But I'll be in a position to help him too - if we have your cooperation - and _your_ father will get the sweetest deal a criminal like him can get. Protection from his enemies. Slate wiped completely clean. New identity, new life. If Sarah Walker devotes herself to honing her craft she may even find herself in a position to help him out if he finds that he can't quite walk the straight and narrow. I wonder if you think he might need that kind of help later on? Even if we give him that clean slate?"

He could see from the look on her face that she knew he would.

"Enjoy your birthday. Enjoy your graduation. You have twelve whole weeks to think it over." Business was concluded and Graham was confident he would have a visitor on the 15th. If not, he would just have her picked up by the men he was leaving behind to observe her - the ones currently planting dozens of burst transmission tracking devices on nearly everything useful she owned.

As he turned to walk away, leaving the girl to contemplate the card with nothing more than the required address embossed on its surface; impaled by the knife embedded in the tree next to her, he couldn't help giving a final reminder.

"June 15th. 9:00 am. If you're there we can help you become the formidable woman I believe you can be. And I'll make sure the hounds don't get your father's scent."

After the scary man had gone, she knelt down and examined the cash that moments ago represented so many possibilities that were now off the table. It might be enough to live on for a few years but a young girl paying cash for anything of significance would draw suspicion. Where would she stay? She had no one and wasn't sure where to find her mother even if she had been prepared to face her.

Her father was in custody and she had the means to keep him safe. Something she had failed to do over the past year or so. She had something to trade - herself. And maybe the offer itself would be all the man - who had failed to give his name - had described. She had already proven to herself that a normal childhood wasn't quite what she had hoped. She had been considering rejoining forces with her father anyway - maybe this was the next step. Her next adventure. And maybe she would be on the right side this time.

Despite the man's seeming indifference over the outcome, with her father in danger and the spotlight of the CIA clearly focused on her, Jenny Burton knew the only real choice she had was how she intended to travel across the country twelve weeks from now to make her appointment on time.

Then she could find out for herself what she could become.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: I went brain numb researching San Diego public schools course and graduation requirements - much less what they were sixteen years ago - so anyone whose experiences differ just roll with it. I didn't deliberately do the stereotypical thing by making a female character bad at math and science. Note that she's not exactly _bad_ at anything - just less good than everything else - and mostly because she's just not that interested. I didn't want to make her excel at everything. Although I'm pretty sure she would if she _were_ interested.

As far as that final flashback scene of 'Baby', I'll rarely scrap a canon scene entirely and it _was_ nice of them to invite Tony Todd back for one last hurrah, but it simply has to go for multiple reasons. First, how does Sarah beat Casey to Burbank by a full day if she's bouncing from San Diego to DC back to LA? In this story, she's already there. Second, handlers in general. I declare that Sarah has not had a handler for a long time until the Bryce disappearance when they wanted her watched closely. I always thought the implication was that everyone has a handler at all times. Maybe some do but Graham's Enforcer did NOT have a handler. Finally, the scene makes a ridiculous presumption by assigning Sarah (the BEST there is) to 'handle' a civilian when they haven't even yet ascertained whether he is of any use or danger to them. As a farewell scene for Tony Todd I can forgive all this, I just can't use it.

I realize that some installments are difficult to complete in one sitting with some - especially the 'long takes' - requiring readers to set aside time. Hopefully readers are checking the 'content' notes, planning their reading accordingly and finding it worth their while. Only one prologue chapter left after these, another single chapter 'long take' that contains some reveals I had not originally intended to provide so early and that wraps up this grim prologue. Coming in two weeks...


	4. IV: Interlude - Jokers Wild

...in which the Director of the CIA reflects on the manner in which his deadliest agent eventually embraced her unique capabilities and her instrumental influence on a previously abandoned research project - one that ultimately led to a viable solution for a now-missing experimental government intelligence program...

Canon Reference: sidetrack occurring simultaneously with early events of 'Intersect' (aka the Pilot, episode 1.01) and immediately following Chapter 4 from the previous installment; calls upon various elements of Intersect lore from throughout the series

Contents: One super-sized chapter (Ch 6, nearly 13K words with several 'snack breaks' similar to Ch 1); a few early reveals to wrap up our prologue and move on to Burbank; this one deals with some important character elements from a different perspective and how they are tied to multiple elements of Intersect lore and to the Intersect itself.

A/N: I know you're all looking forward to Sarah's arrival in Burbank but this massive chapter (and the secrets it holds) lies between us and those events. As we approach the canon scenes of the pilot episode, be aware that I just go ahead and replace the unnamed 'National Intelligence Director' played by Wendy Mekkena with Bonita Friedericy's 'General Beckman' of the NSA as though it has always been that way. It's easy for me to forget that it _hasn't_ always been that way until I pop in that first disk...

Soon, I will not be subjecting you all to these 'This is John Galt Speaking'-esque chapters (oh, c'mon. Its not _THAT_ bad), at least not as frequently. I will be shifting to my preferred format of several 3K to 5K chapters presented in these same-sized installments - the prologue just didn't lend itself to that. This one is a lot of exposition and pseudo-science and very introspectively narrative-driven (ZERO dialogue - well, direct dialogue anyway - but you'll see why). It would have taken multiple scenes to do it any other way.

It is crazy convoluted which you should have anticipated and known we were in trouble as soon as you saw the words 'Intersect lore'.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership or claim is asserted or implied to the characters or story of the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ in this or any other part. Additionally, in this part, no ownership or claim is asserted or implied to _Atlas Shrugged_ (above), Aesop's Fable #87 (likely NOT subject to copyright!), Dr. Suess' _The Cat in the Hat_, the word game Mad Libs, _Unforgiven_, or a relatively obscure Marvel comics character (which is simultaneously a callout to the epic fan fic that got me creatively and emotionally invested in this madness...).

.

* * *

Part IV: Interlude - Jokers Wild

* * *

.

006: Jokers Wild

Washington, D.C., Office of D/CIA; Wed Sept 19, 2007, 4:40 pm

.

After breaking the news about Larkin and giving a few additional instructions to his agent, CIA Director Langston Graham hung up his phone, sat back heavily in his desk chair, closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a deep breath. He had been up for over 36 hours and assumed he would be up well into the evening again.

He preferred his Langley office but given the cooperative mandate for the Intersect project, he had shifted his habits to this office in Washington and he suspected the inconvenience would continue until this latest situation was resolved. Diane Beckman of the NSA was located here and she had been in charge of the Intersect program since its inception. He had only gotten involved over the last eighteen months and had been more focused on his own efforts prior to that. Given recent breakthroughs he thought it prudent to take a more active role in the project and at least put on a better show of cooperating.

The hour was late enough - barely - that he deemed it respectable to rise and extract a half-empty bottle of Glenlivet 21 from his well-stocked credenza. As he poured two fingers of single malt whiskey he once again congratulated himself on successfully establishing several 'research and support' substations in a few key cities throughout the country several years ago. Since his agents technically weren't supposed to be operating domestically, these substations were ostensibly staffed with technical support and intelligence analysis personnel. If anyone ever noticed that a handful of agents happened to be present on long rotations from time to time that really couldn't be helped.

Unfortunately, of the two agents currently present in Los Angeles, one was not very seasoned and the other was not particularly subtle. Neither agent was his first preference for a mission of this importance and sensitivity and he was glad he hadn't pulled the trigger and just flipped a coin between the two. But the mere existence of the LA substation meant that Agent Walker had a place to go for any equipment, intel or additional support she needed to make contact with the target and complete her mission quickly.

He would reestablish contact with her once she had checked in there. To ensure that she would only deal with support staff and the other two agents would not cross paths with her he quickly sent word to recall them to Washington immediately. He had been sitting on something for a few days in which one of them would be keenly interested. That would leave Walker to operate freely in LA for now and reevaluate based on wherever the investigation led her.

If Agent Walker hadn't unexpectedly surfaced nearby he would have had to choose one of the available agents. But she was still his absolute best and she had the additional advantage of being almost completely unknown to the rest of the intelligence community. A phantom who could remain hidden from his congressional overseers, the NSA and this latest, long-fermenting menace rising from within his own ranks.

He stoppered the bottle, put it back in its place and took the few steps to his office window. He let the old fashioned glass dangle from his fingertips at his side as he gazed across the city scape of the Capital and recalled that first meeting with the young girl who would become Agent Walker.

She hadn't started out with any particular indication that she would or could become what she had. She _shouldn't_ have become what she had. He had never imagined that the spindly, terrified girl he confronted in a wooded area near her home in San Diego nearly a decade ago would become his most valued weapon in his rapid ascension through the ranks of The Agency.

She was brilliant. Something she kept hidden and only he seemed to realize or fully appreciate. Never revealing her true capabilities. Always holding something in reserve. But her intellect was why he had first targeted her as a potential intelligence asset and research subject over fifteen years ago - much longer than she herself knew.

Her language skills were phenomenal - an 'intuitive hyper polyglot' as his scientists had later described her - and that was both a specific skill he coveted for his project and a cognitive process heavily related to the other areas of their research that were lagging the most. Her father's erratic travel patterns had made her difficult to follow and the unconventional father-daughter con team wasn't exactly the top priority of the CIA but he flagged them nonetheless.

Everywhere the father and daughter were detected his agents later interviewed the people with whom she had interacted and found that over time she had expanded her repertoire impressively: speaking Spanish in Nogales in '92, Canadian French in Quebec in '93, learning nuances of Russian from a kindly old man she had befriended in Chicago in '94 and picking up fragments of other languages in their other travels.

The project had not been ready for her then and he worried he had lost track of her completely in late 1996. But by the time they caught up with her in San Diego in 1998, Graham's pet project's 'Template' program was still struggling with technical obstacles and they were beginning parallel work on the more ambitious and more problematic neural mapping additions.

The neural mapping efforts they - correctly, as it turned out - believed would ultimately benefit from understanding her uncommon linguistic ability. The efforts that _would_ have allowed temporary transference of skills and abilities to agents for use on specific missions in addition to possibly correcting some of the flaws in the Template program that had led to even Graham suspending that program. The efforts that _had_ been so close to a serious breakthrough after over six years of development until the events of last night had destroyed their only working model and most of their research.

Graham lamented that all his research had recently been so heavily concentrated at the Intersect facility. It was foolish but he had only intended to briefly move it all to one place while they merged it with the Intersect program. Just as his project had seemed to crack the code to making the Intersect functional, the Intersect encoding breakthroughs had given his research team strong hopes of advancing his project to its final stage. He had hoped it would be the final step. Instead Larkin had blown everything to hell.

He took a burning sip of scotch and reflected on the project he had quietly been building for years.

.

* * *

.

The Template program was built upon the failures of three unidentified scientists in the mid '80s; a learning machine concept referred to as The Cipher.

All digital records of the participation, involvement, identity and whereabouts of any scientists or research subjects had been expunged with no clear indication of why or by whom and the physical records were so heavily redacted as to be useless. Upon attempting to dig deeper Graham had been reprimanded and told that all personnel and testing information was Code: Black. One of many projects that were only known to exist due to directives explicitly stating that they did _not_ exist.

Executive seal prevented his further inquiry or even that of the Director of the CIA. But the Director at the time was as curious as Graham at the possibilities and did allow him to utilize the few surviving prototype hardware components - although a key element apparently used as a system programming matrix would have to be reverse engineered - and some surviving notes kept by a technician regarding the technical aspects of the program.

As an Assistant Director - a position achieved after a career as a conniving and selectively brutal field agent and later successes leading similarly ruthless teams in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East - Graham had built up a lot of political currency within The Agency. He lobbied for and received sponsorship for a program to recreate and build upon the visual encoding technology that seemed to have been originally created to help facilitate rapid learning of mission critical information.

It was a dual purpose research project. Over his career, Graham had encountered plenty of highly proficient trainees and had also encountered plenty of candidates who would do whatever it took to get the job done. But these were rarely the same people. He had a vision of streamlining the agent recruitment process in one of two ways:

The technology could potentially be used to either make highly trained individuals more receptive to his vision - a select group of highly trained, highly proficient intelligence operatives who who could subtly be made more receptive to doing the things no one wanted to talk about, the _way_ he wanted them done. This was the less desirable option because it still required a huge investment in training time that was only justifiable if results were guaranteed.

Or it could be used to grant those already more willing to do the dirty work the unparalleled ability to do so. Accelerate and broaden their training and push them beyond their natural limitations.

To either make the capable more willing or to make the willing more capable.

The learning machine concept of the original Cipher could conceivably be used to solve either problem.

The 'Cipher A', behavioral modification, or 'Template', program leveraged what they believed to be an untested aspect of the original learning program. An aspect that theoretically made it possible to temporarily overwrite a subject with a specific persona and some small but key fabricated memories to create authenticity. The trick was doing so with some degree of 'transparency' so that the agent you have spent so much time, effort and money training was not completely lost. If successful, agents would be able to commit entirely to their covers while still maintaining some underlying ability to control their actions and utilize their considerable training.

They would be less likely to break cover under duress or even torture. Less likely to make a catastrophic mistake. And, with a few modifications Graham had incorporated, less likely to refuse to follow questionable orders. Graham's preferred tactics - and other tactics he was at least willing to entertain - definitely included options that most considered extreme or immoral, if not outright illegal. He hadn't ascended to his current position by leaving any options on the table.

The 'Cipher B', neural mapping and upload, or 'Skills', program was even further behind than its foundering sister program. The complexity involved in transferring not just information, but also the associated neurological control of a subject's body and the necessary instant replication of 'muscle memory' seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle. They could not yet understand how to significantly compress the gradual, natural process of _learning_ a physical skill. Or compress the massive amount of data that would be required into digestible packets.

It wasn't as subtle as the Template program. There was some remedial work on 'layering' repetitive downloads - alternating incrementally more intense 10 to 25 minute information downloads with physical repetition of the downloaded information. But those efforts still seemed to rely upon the old adage describing the best way to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

So the project's initial efforts concentrated more on what was deemed the more achievable Template program - manipulating an already proficient, highly-trained individual into doing things they would ordinarily hesitate or even outright refuse to do. Removing all hesitation. Creating spies with what Graham deemed the perfect mindset.

The overall project was code named 'Omaha' and after many promises and failures to deliver on them it was considered a disaster. So much so that almost everyone who was interested in it had distanced themselves from it. The fact that it couldn't even be evaluated without human testing was the primary reason. Of the original three volunteer research subjects, two were catatonic and the third completely and violently insane. All three were officially listed as killed in action and hidden away in a secure institution.

Involvement by many long-since departed officials was quietly covered up but the Director of the CIA at the time still appreciated the possibilities and - like Graham - focused on the ends over the means. Although he offered no public shows of support the project was never fully discontinued. Research and development simply became far more subtle.

Lack of full funding - relying on pilfering from operational budgets - made for slow going. The remaining core team of scientists had attempted to replicate some of the missing and undocumented componentry of the original Cipher but the transparency issue was still a huge problem. When people were crammed into ill-fitting personas they could conceivably be tightly controlled but were only good for a few missions. Their minds tended to simply break when attempting to turn them into someone too different than their true selves.

Few missions were so significant that they justified wasting heavily trained resources in such a way. So the programming would have to be used sparingly or there was a risk of burning out the agent's mind with too many personas or personas their subconscious fought against too intensely. An army of highly trained but catatonic and bedridden agents would be nearly as useless as an army of highly trained agents with tendencies to object to his orders.

Successes were limited to downloading basic, static information with no better reliability than putting the same information on a piece of paper and letting the subject study it.

A technological marvel but a practical failure.

They could not reliably get anyone to deliberately do anything they wouldn't normally at least entertain doing - not without forcing the subject's personality to yield to the imposed one entirely. The program scientists feared that this specific use of the old technology would be unpredictable, uncontrollable and potentially irreversible. They could download details of cover identities but they were still just a suit the agent can take off, not the influential control they were hoping for.

The best use was tapping into the darkest parts of an agent's psyche. The things even they didn't want to acknowledge we're a part of them. The subject still needed to _accept_ the program - embrace the things they didn't want to admit they were capable of doing.

They still did not have the right understanding of the mental process required to get people to embrace different 'imposed' personas of their darker selves - to pretend to be someone else to the point that they _become_ them and still manage to remain in control - much less allow more subtle guidance of their actions.

And then a research subject raised from her youth to do exactly that - become someone else - fell unexpectedly into their laps.

.

* * *

.

It had not been Graham's initial intention to recruit Jenny Burton - or whatever she chose to call herself - as an agent. His initial impressions upon actually meeting the girl made him reconsider it as a possibility. Her youth would have prevented him from recruiting her as any type of conventional agent so this project was the perfect place to hide her away from the world while he assessed her full potential.

When she did arrive at the specified time and place he greeted her warmly. Following his instructions to introduce herself at the desk as Sarah Walker had been the first tiny step in molding her. He just had no idea at the time how instrumental she would be in developing the process that would be used to mold her further.

He had made a point of greeting her personally, formally introducing himself and apologizing for being so heavy handed upon their first meeting. He assured her that her father was being relocated to the east coast and assuming a new identity, as agreed upon. That he had kept his end of their bargain. A three-minute phone call under the pretense of the U.S. Marshalls' WITSEC program had sealed the deal.

He did not go into details about the patriarch of the Leonov crime organization being found dead in his prison's showers and his successor agreeing to remove the bounty on Jack Burton's head under threat of a similar fate. These tactics were discussions for another time. He instead talked up the exciting caricature of life as a government agent. Every word was true in one way or another but painted a deliberately incomplete picture.

She was almost immediately shipped off to Boston to begin her language studies and rudimentary but intense physical training - emphasizing promises of a life of purpose and adventure with no particularly high expectations. During that training, his research scientists began evaluating her neural activity as it related to language learning and the fortunes of the project changed dramatically.

Unlike downloading basic static information, speaking a language with the level of effectiveness he demanded was far more than just memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules. It is a physical _and_ mental skill. They originally hoped that studying her learning process would drive some progress toward rapid learning of not just language but other skills as well. They hadn't expected her to be the goose that continued to lay golden eggs.

Two of the top researchers were involved in both the Template program and the neural mapping aspects - Cipher A and B - or 'Thing One' and 'Thing Two' as they often referred to the two different flavors of Cipher technology. Due to the reduction in resources they both happened to be present when a young woman known only by a project reference code had reported for screening. She was visibly nervous and they got her talking to try to ease her nerves over the course of several hours of testing.

They had been directed to focus on language learning but in the course of discussion quickly discovered that she had learned those languages to help her father on 'jobs'. The young woman wasn't entirely forthcoming when they asked about the nature of those jobs but they pretended to be lesser ranking technicians and asked probing questions like if she ever had to pretend to be someone else - like an agent would be expected to do, of course.

Their interest was piqued and, over the course of hours of deliberately and unnecessarily slow calibrations and the time-consuming tests themselves, some limited conversation eventually began to reluctantly flow. Eventually they both got the vaguely described but distinct impression that this young woman was naturally adept at convincing herself and everyone around her that she was someone else. They later persuaded Graham that she could be an ideal test subject for the stalled Template program in addition to using her language proficiency to kick start the neural mapping aspects of the Skills project.

After further discussion with Graham revealed or confirmed some elements of her background, they became even more convinced and argued that her time spent as a con artist while so very young, minimal interaction with peers and her underdeveloped sense of social norms made her the closest thing they would ever find to a blank slate.

Graham couldn't repress his smile - both at the time and upon reflecting upon the memory - and both then and now silently thanked the girl's father for spending nearly the previous decade training the perfect research subject for them.

She couldn't have been better suited if her father had handed her over as a baby.

Additional neurological tests while role playing under the guise of agent training revealed compartmentalized cortical activity that led them to change their approach from wholesale identities and focus on manipulating the function of the prefrontal cortex; just enough to create a sort of void in the subject's neural center that established their personality. A void that could be filled via visually encoded suggestions tailored to the subject. Suggestions delivering the complementary personality traits of a specifically formatted cover identity and even a few vague snippets of fabricated memories of which the subject's own mind attempted to create a corresponding mental image and which reinforced the desired behaviors.

The revised, less-intense testing on dozens of recruits had shown no results whatsoever and Graham had begun to think that the screening tests were simply too mild. He had suggested intensified testing which he was assured would short circuit the test subjects in such a way as to both invalidate the tests and make the subjects even less likely to adhere to future programming. His researchers emphasized that this program was unlike the unrelated accelerated physical enhancement program that seemed to benefit from pushing the envelope in most cases. The approach in this case had to be subtle. So subtle as to be undetectable.

They didn't want to push too hard, too fast but Jenny Burton didn't seem to suffer from he same strain of repetitive suggestions as other test subjects. The programming they devised after her initial scans worked so much like her natural thought process that they were quickly able to iterate their approach based on her reactions to develop a viable protocol. Within the Template program she was known simply as 'Template 34' and all subsequent research was based on her ability to embed herself in the role of an assumed identity.

First they trained the subject's brain to translate the encoding - a high res version of a manufacturing QR code - by bombarding the visual cortex with QR fragments and descriptive key words and images in a series of seemingly random combinations. This was done embedded in mundane training videos or in a blur of nothing but such images portrayed while under mild sedation as some sort of optical response test. Either way, the subject had no indication or awareness that they were developing an ability to process any future codes.

Then they worked on embedding the codes in other images. They could replace the obvious code matrix with seemingly innocuous photographs with hidden codes that the mind could still process. They could then associate that information with narrative profiles that reinforced the traits of the cover identity under the desired cover name. Adding seemingly random sets of single nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to the training images allowed the creation of code phrases only Graham knew linked to a certain persona's encoding in a Machiavellian game of Mad Libs. As long as the briefing photos were presented in the proper order the personality of the agent would be subtly molded with no indication of what had been done.

It was more crude and cumbersome than they had envisioned but it worked. In addition to breakthroughs in language learning, her natural ability to assume a cover both made her better able to absorb their first clumsy attempts at the Template process used to reinforce her various training identities and provided the feedback necessary to advance their research and development into something more broadly usable. And they were able to turn a few otherwise mild-mannered but highly capable agents into deadly weapons.

The result was a serviceable ability to successfully impose 'personas' upon some agents. Not full ones - those fatal flaws still existed - but shells of identities. Subtle nudges designed to improve consistency, adherence to covers and dedication to mission objectives. Suggestions that worked best when tailored to the individual's capability and willingness to perform the actions expected of the cover identity.

To the things they were - at least on some level - willing to do.

.

* * *

.

The same mental process that made her so proficient at language learning became evident in other ways when her latent athletic ability was awakened during her fundamental agent training. They realized that her ability to quickly mimic, then thoroughly learn and master various fighting styles was another mental process they could study, replicate and optimize and they chose to invest three years on gathering bio-neural data on every fighting style under the sun. Both her process for learning them and her practice of their mastered forms.

The technology housed in what appeared to be a vacant store rivaled the most advanced projects at DARPA. The scanning equipment alone originally took up the space of two large bookcases, the agent's neural learning process was evaluated with hidden cortical scanners and ocular readers in the ceiling disguised as surveillance cameras. Devices on par with a surveillance satellite's magnification and tracking capabilities just on a physically smaller scale.

The scanning technology was eventually compressed and simplified to the size of a double-lens helmet cam or goggles, coupled with neural signal readers hidden throughout catsuit-style mission gear to read neuromuscular responses. The project engineers seemed bewildered when Graham commented on the form-fitting garb and any fantasy fulfillment getting in the way of research progress but they cited only the need for maximum conductivity. This gear was used on a variety of training missions to process learning and mastery of other field skills.

Research successes were built upon her individual successes. All this occurred while she was emerging as one of the most proficient martial artists, incursion specialists and strategists her instructors had ever seen. The data they had banked would hopefully one day be used to create additional 'super-spies' but _her_ capabilities were not uploaded in any way.

Her skills were hard earned through a combination of natural talent and sheer will. This original super agent had achieved that status entirely by her own efforts. Her amazing skill set was all her. As the only research subject whose skill set had not benefitted at all from the shortcuts of minor downloads - the one who came first - she had been designated in all program testing and documentation on this side of the project as simply 'Subject Zero'.

Graham was as impressed as her instructors at her ability to master multiple fighting styles and other valuable skills. And - not satisfied with one agent of such prodigious skill - he was ecstatic at the idea of one day being able to program agents with that same proficiency. To make copies of her with a fraction of the time and effort that would otherwise be required and beyond what would otherwise be a particular agent's expected limitations.

Because they had not initially realized she would be their ideal template, the opportunity to map her learning of the most basic elements had been lost. These gaps were relatively easy to fill when they ran a few recruits with less potential and even less natural ability through the same facility.

Even Larkin, who had shown real potential, was only able to achieve his level of martial arts proficiency through the few limited tests of these downloads and subsequent heavy reinforcement in the dojo. He was one of a handful of agents who benefitted from the template data pulled from scans of Subject Zero and who were more recently considered viable candidates to host the Intersect. Those who did so successfully would be further considered for testing of future incarnations of the Cipher.

His proficiency in some styles nearly equalled hers and he mirrored her style - one that suited his relatively small stature similar to how it minimized her strength disadvantage against most opponents. But it took forever. Nearly as long as the data collection itself and only covered a few of the styles mastered by Subject Zero.

Graham realized it was extremely unlikely he would ever find another person who could combine so many skills at such high levels of proficiency without the assistance of a successful Cipher B solution.

But Subject Zero had given them the makings of the skills template they planned to use to create the ready-made agents Graham desired. The ability to actually upload those skills into an agent candidate would take additional years of research but they were nearly half-way there and the once impossible now seemed at least feasible.

.

* * *

.

She had initially embraced her training out of fear of reprisals but, still young, impressionable and hopeful despite her ingrained suspicious nature and with constant encouragement from Graham, his prized agent trainee found that she simply enjoyed being so good at so many impressive things and it fed her childhood desire for adventure. But later, even with the vast skill set she had mastered, Graham had initially struggled to find a _use_ for her. He had built the most advanced, high-performance racing machine in the world with a driver who backed away from the red-line in critical situations.

Late in her experimental training, an agent had been sent to befriend and assess her psychologically as well as encourage behaviors intended to reduce any 'social awkwardness' from her unconventional childhood. The observations were not entirely encouraging. Her morality profile was a mixed bag compared to his expectations based on her upbringing. She wasn't completely amoral or as hedonistic as he had hoped despite some intemperate tendencies. She was an adrenaline junkie and risk-taker but was somewhat sensitive to the effects of her actions on others.

His early assessment of her moral flexibility turned out to be entirely dependent on the situation. He already suspected she would do nearly anything for her own survival or for someone she cared about - based on their very first interaction - but the less personally compelling the reason the more likely she was to choose right over wrong.

Like any prospective agent, he didn't want _her_ making those assessments.

Most of her trial missions were disastrous. At least the ones involving anything beyond what he considered nothing more than petty crime. The things he could and often did farm out to actual criminals. She barely passed some of her field assessments - including an archaic red test not usually assigned to conventional recruits but a staple of this and other experimental programs that he found useful for establishing and testing control - seemingly out of reflex more than by design.

Based on the confiscated security footage, he was nearly certain she had intended to abort the test and let the assassination target he had chosen for her escape before suddenly going for the kill. In subsequent missions she tried to detain people she was ordered to eliminate more often than not. But even with her contributions to the research program he had invested three years in her, had increased his expectations and now he wanted his vision of a surgical, ruthless assassin not a con woman with a stun gun or a can of mace.

She had insisted on being considered for a paramilitary rotation in SAD like most of her male peers. It was atypical of a female agent and he had been certain she would fail even though her training to date had allowed her to leap frog other candidates and join a team after only a few additional trainings. Instead it seemed the black and white, kill or be killed nature of combat operations brought out the best in her and reinforced his assessment of her survival instincts.

Her unit loved her but he didn't want people asking questions about her true background if she were left there. He didn't bother contemplating what it meant that life in a war zone was the least psychologically stressful activity he was imposing on her when he chose another type of mission for evaluating her potential and the potential uses of the Cipher program.

.

* * *

.

All agents knew the risks of seduction missions which was why so many precautions were usually taken when his more valuable agents were involved. Graham didn't normally push those agents into these more risky, less-controlled situations. He had been known to send local prostitutes in with minimal information and simple instructions in order to preserve his more valuable chess pieces.

He had also been experimenting with a few lesser-trained women he had 'rescued' from desperate situations - women he intended more as infiltrators than legitimate agents. They required some training but didn't represent nearly as much of an investment as an agent. Their uses were few and they were easily replaced.

The slim risk of a female agent trained as an assassin being first, caught in a situation so desperate as to decide maintaining cover was her only chance for survival and second, blaming him personally and seeking retribution was a situation he would prefer to avoid. Setting such a thing as an _expectation_ for such an agent was also likely hazardous to ones health. Or job security. Defection or some other type of retaliation became much more likely if the survival options of a seduction mission devolved to the repulsive extreme and he didn't want his most effective weapons later used against him.

How freely these tactics were used came and went in cycles over the years but he knew from associates in other agencies that something similar was attempted a few years prior with various enticements of desperate women vulnerable to manipulation with mixed success. A few candidates he had run across were railroaded into such objectionable roles and they found their own ways of coping with those types of assignments. Given her failures to fully execute her orders on previous elimination missions, he was curious whether implanted cover personas could improve upon those results despite Walker's irrational fear of such situations.

She had participated as part of support teams on missions that had gone horribly wrong and witnessing what had happened to other female agents in similar situations didn't bode well for this next test. But despite her training, as long as she refused to kill in most situations - as long as she didn't represent much of a threat to anyone - as long as she remained somewhat toothless - Graham decided to use her to test the limits of the Cipher's Template personas.

A few textbook seductions with adequate support had been relatively uneventful. But one with an foolishly, yet expectedly, overly-aggressive mark in Constanta in December of 2001 had an unforeseen outcome. Tactical support options were limited enough due to a small but well-trained armed security presence. Graham had taken the extra step of casually ordering the support team to stand down - against their objections - even as she increasingly awkwardly worked the abort code word into conversation three times in under two minutes. He had a different outcome in mind for this one.

The outcome of the mission itself was of minimal importance to him. He would simply let the mark push her into the unplanned alternative inherent in any of these types of missions to see how she would choose to proceed. Would she panic in any way? Try to talk her way out? Or join the ranks of his other infiltrators by committing to the cover and allowing her target to simply behave the way she had so recently enthusiastically encouraged? He simply waited to see how effectively the behavioral template would force her to maintain her submissive cover identity.

It had the unexpected result of causing her to buck the program completely.

It would have been yet another failure if not for her achieving all of her mission objectives despite rejecting the option she had been trained to endure if necessary; the option that all of his female full-fledged agents found repulsive. She instead opted to unleash her extensive talents in multiple deadly arts mastered over the course of three years of training and these past few months of service in a glorious display of violence.

She was aware and lucid enough to then systematically search the house, crack the safe she had only planned to locate and calmly interrogate the two survivors before coldly finishing them off. After dispatching the last remaining guard, she gave her would-be rapist the option of a quick end or being abandoned there - unmoving with his broken spine lying among the corpses of his security detail - in exchange for information.

She hadn't consciously intended to injure him quite so severely but a vicious elbow strike to his back had carried every bit of her anger, fear and subconscious application of her knowledge of the weak points of the human body with it. Having outed herself as the opposite of a helpless victim she had freely admitted to the obvious implication that she was a government agent of some kind. He would need to be detained or silenced.

There was too much venom in it to consider it a mercy killing but she wouldn't have wanted to be left like that - at least not if she expected to never see daylight again. So, once he had told her everything she needed to know about his illegal operations and key contacts, she retrieved a tactical knife from one of his downed men and kept her promise.

The unutilized support team members thought they had been reduced to transport for the unknown agent. They were already shedding and packing up their gear into their two vehicles when she exited the garage in her own transportation. And they griped and grumbled and called foul names after her when the Dutch orange Spyker C8 that she had just orphaned slowed down as it passed - just long enough for her to roll down the heavily tinted window and deliver a one-finger salute.

They had been instructed to assist the cleaner team with removing all evidence of her presence and grumbled some more about being assigned to help dispose of the bodies. Their complaints turned to silence when they saw the carnage one unassisted and unarmed woman had left behind.

It was two-hours from Constanta to the debrief site in Bucharest and she barely registered that she had made the drive. She had been sitting on the floor of the briefing room, barefoot, in a gold sequined gown splashed with blood; her ruined shoes abandoned in a roadside ditch along with the contents of her stomach after a few miles. The same darkening crimson stain was in her hair and partly covering her face as she stared into space until Graham arrived.

The look in her eyes may have been frightening but her results and brutal efficiency was more than he could have hoped for. It was a thing of beauty and made Graham smile again as he sipped his whiskey and recalled how everything had turned out.

His reaction at the time was not as optimistic although he now hoped to achieve similar results with future agents of the project. Graham had humored her with empty apologies for the mission outcome - blaming a comms malfunction for the support team's failure to intercede - and praised her application of her training while she started to shake as she came down from the adrenaline high.

As she emerged from a near fugue state and began to recall her actions she barely had enough self control remaining to prevent herself from coming completely unhinged or to conceal the struggle of it from Graham.

.

* * *

.

She _was_ capable of it. She was the immensely powerful weapon he had envisioned the project one day producing but this particular weapon was completely uncontrollable. Her one constant motivator appeared to be self-preservation but it was unclear how or if they could hope to reliably replicate fear of death as a trigger. He had found her breaking point but it was not a practical solution. These sorts of breakdowns in high-stress situations coupled with significant training delays were why the Template program was the less ideal solution by far.

Graham felt he had exhausted the possibilities. As far as he was concerned, she was simply weak. A small time crook raised by a small time crook, neither of whom could play with the big boys. The programming wouldn't hold and attempting to intensify the personas - whether assassin or seductress - and force her into the desired actions was almost certain to fail. Results may not be as favorable next time. She would get herself killed and waste all of her potential, or worse, reveal her affiliations.

Over the next few months multiple missions were undertaken during lulls in her SAD service. Additional attempts at lesser, relatively risk-free seductions had again devolved into panicked violence - the opposite of what Graham wanted and earning her an unflattering nickname that she defiantly adopted briefly as a code name for such missions. One specific joint operation with another agency that would have been at least somewhat traumatizing to anyone had seriously rattled her and somehow caused her cold and vicious persona to briefly reemerge. Yet she had attempted to detain targets of two elimination missions, successfully doing so once and forced to kill rather than doing so cleanly in the first place in the other.

She had shown she would kill when necessary in combat and for self-preservation but still hadn't embraced her abilities. She was too unpredictable, too uncontrollable and was always a bad psychological fit for the type of agent he wanted. And she was never intended as anything more than a research subject anyway.

Given all the investment in training, it had been worth a try. He had gotten more than he expected out of her in terms of advancing Cipher research. The small but important breakthroughs may have paved the way for downloadable skills in a few years. But as an agent, he was ready to chalk her up as a lost cause. He could just have her disposed of - put down like a plow horse that had outlived its usefulness. He could find some sort of support role or possibly set her up with a new identity in exchange for her silence and cut her loose entirely. After all, he did owe most of the project successes to her.

He had settled on washing his hands of her entirely. He had cut open the golden goose only to find there was nothing left to extract from her. Whether he would get rid of her by elimination or with a new identity he was still undecided. Instead it seemed the goose had one final golden egg to offer. The most valuable yet. The one that made his vision of her possible. She preempted his decision by making her proposition and sealed her fate.

It seemed she had been stewing over the seduction mission in Romania that had resulted in nothing less than a massacre and the few others where she had witnessed other agency resources pushed too far. She recognized the possibility of one day encountering a situation she couldn't tear and claw her way out of and considered her options. She decided she wanted more than anything to avoid the possibility of having to maintain her cover to an unacceptable degree in order to survive if she encountered an even more hopeless situation.

She only asked that he exhaust all other possibilities before giving her such assignments in the future and to allow her unlimited license to do it 'her way' if she must. And there had to be dozens of other types of missions for which she was better suited. Theoretical exercises aside, she would do anything he needed. Just not that.

He was initially dismissive of the idea, mostly because he simply didn't want an agent to dictate the terms of her service. Avoiding certain types of missions entirely would be a shame considering the stunning beauty they had uncovered when the awkward young girl had joined their ranks. But he didn't correct her mistaken assumption that he would casually put his most valuable resources in such unpredictable situations. He had other agents and lesser resources who could fill those roles but she didn't need to know that. What she was offering was something much more valuable to him.

And she had agreed that a seduction _approach_ was still on the table for initial infiltration just that he shouldn't expect any survivors to question if she was forced to do anything more than talk or fake her way out. He also couldn't conceive such a mission breaking down so completely as his deliberate manipulation of the one that had spurred this unsolicited offer. And he was perfectly satisfied with 'her way'.

So instead of cutting her loose, as intended, Graham noncommittally said he would take it under advisement. He mentioned it casually in a weekly briefing with the project scientists and was met with surprisingly thoughtful silence. Their silence and the looks exchanged tipped him off that he may have stumbled on to something. A solution to the problem of candidates rejecting the programming. And all it required was for him to graciously accept her unsolicited proposal. One tiny detail made all the difference.

She chose.

And the best part was it was entirely her idea. The choice she had made - to do one thing she despised over another thing she despised - gave the program something to latch onto. An anchor point in her psyche that she herself had created. All they had to do then was exploit it to its fullest. As long as she never knew that it was a choice she had been driven to maybe she would be able to do what she herself had suggested.

They were not sure it would work. It was a shitty, somewhat forced choice to be sure. Really no more a choice than any other prior action that had delivered her into his group of elite agents. But the next mission - with a specifically engineered cover persona and an obviously reprehensible target (at least based on the intel she was given) - went off without a hitch. And the next. And the next. She started emulating the briefing process in her own mind - to steel herself for what was to come, compartmentalize to a ridiculous degree and embrace her covers - like she was taught by her father. Her father deserved as much credit for her rebirth as anyone.

She gradually became someone else entirely. Begrudgingly acting under the duress of circumstances led to lesser evils becoming more reasonable and means justifying ends. She became as coldly calculating as any of his most vicious operatives - as deadly as any of his most capable - and his now-notorious Wild Card Enforcer was born.

A vengeful demon that grew in intensity as it fed on its loathing for its own actions. The futility of attempting to escape a downward spiral of countless irredeemable choices had erased the woman she once might have been entirely. She made the fatal error of assuming those choices were her own - a false realization that resigned her to her fate and tore down any remaining resistance to fulfilling what she had been told was her duty. Eventually she didn't even need the coded personas.

From there, the project was able to salvage nearly half the original candidates by creating completely artificial, seemingly-favorable scenarios and choices for their agents. Deliberately staging the same type of accidental contrivance that had been so successful for forcibly evolving Walker and opened her up to the influence of the Cipher's programming. They weren't as versatile as he may have liked but there were enough megalomaniacs and those with heroic delusions to make it work.

These remaining agents were highly effective even if not quite as proficient as what he had envisioned. They weren't _her_. They were making progress but still struggling with how to encode physical skills as successfully as Cipher A had encoded cover personalities. He would bide his time until Cipher B was operational and he could make the already more willing candidates even more capable than this crop of operatives.

Except maybe for Walker. She was a class unto herself.

His favorite attack dog.

Not quite trained to kill from a pup but neither are actual attack dogs. He got her as young as he likely could, had her trained in the basics and then in the deadly arts and lucked into a situation that triggered the best in her. Meaning the worst.

Walker embraced her new role and evolved from acting out of a fear of death or repercussions to operating with a fear of nothing. She eventually reached a point where she took pride in simply being the best in the world at something and the programming was no longer the issue but rather her self-imposed isolation.

She had shown signs of being overcome by remorse at times - dwelling on her actions - and he wanted to keep her operating well for as long as possible. Keep his beautiful enforcer ready for use. So he limited her downtime and began to force her to participate in team operations where she would have to at least interact with others. She started with scouting operations for the Secret Service in locations where Graham had other interests. These were alternated with sensitive solo missions, the details of which he needed to be kept strictly between her and him.

He tried adding a few missions with two and three man teams from his best conventional agents from his own ranks. These achieved a high degree of success but the other agents, not previously knowing each other at all, assumed she was simply bait. Their successes were usually due to the fact that she often ended up as the hammer. These were explained away as her - under whatever cover she had adopted - operating well over her head.

He later assembled a team of three other proficient female agents from various agencies with similar experiences of being minimized by their male peers within their own agencies. This group included one from the DEA she had worked with previously who had refused to quit. He had hoped seeing her old colleague back in action would help assuage her fears. She seemed to stabilize for a while until a still unresolved betrayal fractured the team.

Then he assigned her and Larkin as partners.

Male agents accepted the programming much more easily, often embracing the desired behaviors out of delusions of the stereotypes they grew up with and Larkin was no different. Men were just easier to placate or manipulate and found far less objectionable about their required roles. Any motivation would do. Ambition, revenge, a need for approval, occasionally blackmail if you weren't worried about the beast turning on its handler - negative emotions were better for some reason, more visceral, more difficult to battle with reason.

But Walker remained aloof and isolated despite Larkin's advances. That was when he conceived of Bryce and Sarah Anderson. They were a good match. They leveled each other out and he wanted both to perform at their best. He had paired them up for several missions and assumed that nature would take its course and cement the partnership.

He was willing to risk one more manipulation if it meant having such an effective two-agent team with a believable cover at his disposal. If it kept her even a little bit distracted from the harsh realities of her profession, so much the better. Walker had been careful to maintain her professionalism among her peers and maybe a little nudge by just once more using a specifically configured cover of 'the Andersons' was a little presumptuous. But he rationalized that it really hadn't taken much of a push.

.

* * *

.

Graham stepped back to his desk and looked at the strange device Larkin had in his possession last night. The wrist computer was very similar in design to Larkin'a laptop - the one they had confiscated from Walker - and Larkin had apparently put too much faith in its durability and the reliability of its self-destruct mechanism. It had been damaged during Larkin's escape, seemingly preventing the destruction protocols from fully functioning as intended.

NSA analysts had spent the remainder of last night and most of the morning analyzing the device, sidestepping three boobytraps - non-lethal ones that had been designed as failsafes to destroy components of the device if tampered with - and were fortunate to finally narrow the destination to Los Angeles less than an hour before he had reestablished contact with Agent Walker.

They were as surprised that a direct message had been sent as they were that the device had been capable of compressing and sending the Intersect files. Beckman had exercised her authority over the program and ordered her own personal fixer to prep, depart tonight and organize his team on site tomorrow.

Graham was still hopeful that they had enough time to get ahead of this situation and wouldn't volunteer his suspicions about the recipient until the NSA found something more difinitive on their own. He was fairly certain to whom the message had been sent and would begin with him. NSA would just have to catch up.

Larkin had been a pain in his ass since he became an agent - his _corpse_ had even been mislaid sometime after he was officially declared dead - but he had also been extremely effective over the past four years. Larkin's notion of what it was to be a spy was largely influenced by adolescent movie viewing and Graham chose to encourage that notion. It gave the program something to latch onto. But he was nearly as proficient as Walker in some areas and Graham had opted to tolerate the newly intensified arrogance if Larkin continued to perform as well in the field as he had early on.

He had also caused a lot of trouble with Graham's imbedded recruiting efforts at Stanford when he had attempted to get one of his frat buddies recruited by falsifying several records and test results. He had claimed that his friend was a genius with electronics and there wasn't a system in existence that he couldn't hack.

He had later apologized for trying to deceive Graham, said he had oversold his friend's capabilities and admitted that his friend had been stealing test answers, even selling them to other students. Larkin himself had turned his friend in to school officials when he had discovered evidence of this.

Due to his reputation and obvious intellectual capacity to achieve the grades reflected in his record, the University had been prepared to reprimand him, strip him of his scholarship, require him to fulfill community service obligations and possibly repeat - or at least make him test out of - several classes with even the appearance of grades that were potentially undeserved.

In his anger at the whole situation, Graham had privately accused Larkin's friend of hacking government databases - one of the skills that Larkin had been so complimentary of - and demanded his expulsion. It was admittedly mostly to punish Larkin by hurting someone Graham had thought was close to him.

Having lost his scholarship his friend would have had a hard time paying for any additional tuition or living expenses right away. It should have just been a major inconvenience. Graham was surprised he hadn't managed to sort it out and finish his education in the time since. Clearly he was nothing like what Larkin had described and Larkin's indifference to the whole affair had made it a pointless gesture.

More recently, work on the improved Cipher had continued but the emphasis had turned to the intelligence processing failings of 9/11. The Intersect was a computerized intelligence comparison tool but the pattern recognition program was highly unreliable, spitting out both false negative and false positive results. What they really needed was a far more advanced comparison algorithm or a comparison engine that could make the intuitive leaps that the current Intersect processing core could not.

Never one to pass up an opportunity, Graham saw his chance to seize even more control of the supposedly cooperative dual-agency program. He offered up a potential solution from the project he had claimed was mothballed years ago claiming only a minimal maintenance level of activity during those years. The Intersect-proper utilized a very similar image-based ocular encoding but it had been intended only for analysts and programmers to check their inputs. The primary driver of the Intersect was machine code indexes but both the images and codes co-existed within the Intersect with layers upon layers of both.

It was the means developed for Project Omaha's two programs for a human being to download the visual encoding that was merged with the massive intelligence database. It was a desperation play once the automated comparison system encountered so many problems. It was a lucky breakthrough because one of the key scientists involved - one who was so classified that he was contributing remotely - had disappeared shortly after Graham had introduced his solution. They had to rely on the head scientist on site and the many private contractors from one of the top tech firms far more heavily after that.

Opting to downplay his still active pet project, all involved agreed to adopt the name of the more obvious technological components of the upload room. The room where the coding applied to all inputs was individually checked by analysts and programmers on hundreds of screens with specialized glasses preventing the processing of the subliminal coding. The combined entity became known simply as 'The Intersect'.

The contributions of Project Omaha would only be visible to a select few. Those possessing the rare human mind required to digest the images and make it work. There had been some preliminary discussion - assuming successful testing - that work could be done to further compress the data and broaden the candidate pool.

More importantly to Graham, the density of even the Intersect's _current_ image encoding system might be what they needed to make the Cipher B Skills program work properly. It would result in a somewhat reduced candidate pool - at least until they could produce a more efficient encoding scheme that didn't require such an extremely high subliminal image recognition rate - but transferring image data a thousand times more dense than what they had tried before might do the trick. They had just started investigating the idea for the Cipher 2.0 when Larkin blew up the facility.

And now it has been sent to the same underachiever that Larkin had once tried to convince him to recruit as a special class of field support analyst with falsified performance assessments and test scores. A 'Geeks with Guns' idea he had been skeptical about, eventually relented and planned to allow on a provisional basis but then abandoned once Larkin admitted his friend was never really a qualified candidate.

Graham polished off his drink and reached into his top right desk drawer. The paper case was worn and fit loosely around it's now meager contents. He had been to the research facility a few times prior to formally naming the project and had picked up a random deck at the airport news stand fully expecting another boring and unproductive observation of tedious tests and analysis. The lab had no incoming or outgoing communication or data links and while waiting for feasibility results he played more games of solitaire than he could possibly count rather than constantly hovering over the research team.

The then-Director had already approved the new approach, Graham just needed the scientists reviewing what may as well have been the ancient texts and artifacts of a dead prior project. When he officially got the green light he needed in order to request the initial funding for the unnamed project's primary research he had looked down at the writing on the backs of the cards in the draw pile and read the stylized text of the logo with a cartoonish lasso creating a border and a similarly-styled cowboy hat resting askew on the first letter:

'_Omaha Playing Cards_'.

He held onto that same deck and, later in the project, cards representing agents had been used to establish a rough ranking system and default code names. There had only been 39 agents originally included in the project to various degrees, not all of whom had been research subjects but all had been manipulated or otherwise persuaded into various roles outside of typical agent roles. Once no additional candidates or agents were needed, all 2's, 3's, 4's and the 5 of clubs had been disposed of to create a set of agent designations for use in all Project Omaha related activities.

Some agents defied their initial rankings and moved up when higher ranked agents were killed in action or otherwise taken out of service. Others stayed the same - they were still part of an exclusive club. He smiled to think that Sarah Walker, or her earliest incarnation, had once been the Seven of Spades. Only seventeen cards remained of the original 39, plus two extras - one unmarked; one marked.

Graham liked the mystique of it. He liked that those who overheard the code names, usually associated with frighteningly efficient or brutally violent missions, went on to violate protocol and talk in hushed whispers about his 'army'. He liked the notoriety associated with their faceless call signs. Most who had heard a call sign referring to a playing card, to this day, assumed there were a full 52. Or more. Perhaps an entire second deck.

The code name 'Wild Card' had become legendary and was feared by all who didn't consider it some sort of intelligence community ghost story. Many who had witnessed the aftermath of her handiwork first-hand kept the legend alive and many of them believed the designation referred to at least two different agents. Possibly more.

A few lesser resources, like his eventual Nine of Diamonds, defied his initial expectations - by surviving this long, being so resilient and becoming so resourceful - but he had no illusions about her uses. The fact that she came from beginnings so miserable that she considered his offer as an infiltrator to be far less objectionable than staying where she was had been the limit of his consideration of her potential. She was one of three surviving 'Valentine operatives' that he considered part of his elite shadow army - all three managed by Omaha personas to some extent.

His face cards and Aces were the elite of his elite but those ranks had thinned over the years. If earned, agents were moved into those dubious positions of honor. Larkin had the choice of two recently vacated designations when Graham elevated him and it had been no surprise which he had picked. Graham had assumed that it was the more common connotation of the card itself and made some comment to that effect. Larkin had smiled and instead said something he didn't comprehend and had dismissed about being some sort of avenger.

Graham looked once more at the profile of the one-eyed Jack of Hearts with notations in two corners scribbled through and the letters 'BL' written in the upper right corner before tearing it in half and placing it in the secure document destruction bin. Sixteen now. Sixteen plus Walker.

Having originally thrown out the lower ranked cards - and at Larkin's suggestion of the code name 'Joker' - he had reserved one of the wild cards he had neglected to dispose of for his promised computer and technology prodigy. Once Larkin recanted his prior recommendations Graham crossed out the initials he had prematurely added to the card - there would be no 'Field Analysts' or 'Joker Operatives' as he had briefly considered - but he decided to keep the two Jokers as a designation above even his Aces.

.

* * *

.

Graham hadn't mentioned to anyone, including Walker, that he recognized the name Bartowski. He simply directed analysts to dig up intel he partly already knew. If he could fill in any gaps he would do so and simply attribute it to a different intel source. Once the trace signature had come up in LA he had his suspicions that were later confirmed but those details had not yet made their way to Beckman and her NSA team.

He didn't like to be fooled and didn't want to admit he had once been as optimistic for the prospects of the man formerly earmarked for the designation of _Code Name: Joker_ as Larkin himself had once seemed to be. Bartowski was already a major disappointment and of all the people in the world he couldn't believe the only surviving version of the Intersect was sent to him. A cheating hacker who apparently hadn't recovered from or found any new ambition after his expulsion five years ago. Of course Larkin would drag his old friend back into this; Graham's problem child spitting at him from the grave.

As he put the few remaining cards representing the few remaining agents away he held the two Jokers, one in each hand. The one in his left represented both that disappointment and his most significant success from that class of special agents. It was once briefly Bartowski's, but now and forever belonged to Walker.

The frightened rabbit who became a predator.

Once she resolves this mess in Burbank she can be put back in the field and set loose on this new threat his intel reports indicate is rising against the US intelligence community. Hopefully these recent events being betrayed by both Larkin and Ryker won't reduce her effectiveness in any way. Maybe he would appease her by turning her loose on Ryker now that he too had apparently gone rogue.

That disastrous seduction mission - the one she considered a complete failure but he had secretly considered a great success - was an even greater success in retrospect. After those first few months of subsequent successful and lethal incursions and assassinations, he had reassigned her as the Ten of Spades. Shortly thereafter it had become clear what she was now capable of and she began operating without handler oversight; completely autonomously as his King of Diamonds. After Bartowski's candidacy didn't pan out he chose to surpass his vacant Aces completely. Wanting to give her a unique designation but not wanting to reuse the designation 'Joker' he simply chose a different name for the same card.

Instead of a King or an Ace or even the same card described as a 'Joker', she became his Wild Card. Despite his reassurances, she was exactly the killing machine he had hoped for; a mysterious, anonymous entity feared within and outside The Agency.

She had never truly seemed cut out for this role notwithstanding her unparalleled ability to do the job but she was a wolf among sheep now. It had been a long time since he had seen any weakness show through; the weakness of the woman she once might have been.

Not since that last gasp mission intended to find some sort of use for her.

He had made the personnel on site wait for him to debrief her personally. He didn't care that she was still half covered in blood, sitting on the floor leaning against the wall of the briefing room like a broken doll. Her blue eyes somewhat glazed over as she stared hypnotized at the literal blood on her hands.

He had snapped her out of her half-trance by calling her by her true name. The one he knew from that long buried birth certificate he had mentioned at their first meeting. The one they had never spoken of. The one that revealed her as the nineteen year old girl she currently was and ten year old girl she had been when he had first discovered her.

No matter the decisions she had made over the ensuing years, thanks to him this day had been a part of her future for half her life.

But when he barked out her true full name to get her attention he wondered if she had cracked when she had maniacally smiled up at him with nearly half her face a dried crimson mask. She looked up at him from the ground and told him something he already knew.

She said she wasn't that girl anymore.

Then her gaze drifted to the far wall and she wondered aloud, almost too softly for him to hear, how she had become such a monster.

He didn't acknowledge that thought but instead said all the usual placating things - that she was doing what she was trained to do, what was needed of her - that another agent would have been asked to do the same thing and just wouldn't have done it as well.

That she did her job.

That coaxed a disbelieving half-chuckle from her and, though she remained cold and detached, she seemed to come around over the course of the debriefing. He believed a crisis had been averted and told her she would feel better once she got cleaned up and got some rest.

He dismissed her and she showered for most of the next hour.

.

* * *

.

She thought if she was going to break down, this would be the place to do it. It was the one place where no one could see her. No one could hear her. As she watched the water spiraling down the drain until it finally, mercifully, ran clear, she wondered if something had broken inside her because the tears never came.

Shortly after the water ran clear, it began to grow cold. She eventually felt the chill start to set in but made no move to shut off the cold water or to dry or warm herself for another half hour. This numbness. This coldness. This was what she needed to ensure that no one would ever see any such weakness from her again. Nothing that could be ever be used against her or possibly get her killed.

This was beyond anything she had ever been taught as a child but she could do it. Learn to accept this need to break the rules she had merely bent a hundred times before as well as the few that had once been unthinkable. And do so without the reluctance she had felt thus far.

She would embrace her training and its emphasis on the rules of survival over the the rules of right and wrong that others had the luxury of following. And she would never have to worry again about anyone seeing any weakness from her. She would wear her masks until they became her face. Until the lie became the truth.

When she finally stepped out of that shower it was with a new determination to accomplish something that would still require some effort and practice. Whatever had broken could stay broken. Whatever was lost was something she wouldn't be needing anymore. She would finally accept the guidance of others and become the version of herself that could survive this world. Her heart had hardened but it wasn't yet stone. She was shivering but she was not yet armored in solid ice.

If she wanted to survive, she would have to achieve both.

.

* * *

.

Graham returned his thoughts to the present and once again examined the playing card in his left hand - a maniacal jester's face laughing with delight in its center with initials he knew to be a 'CB' scribbled out in the lower right corner and an 'SW' written in the upper left redefining the card's meaning.

Joker. Wild Card. Synonymous to most people but in his mind the difference between his program's greatest success and one of its most disappointing failures.

He had no reason to believe there had been any other such near breakdowns over the years. If there had been, she had successfully kept them to herself. But she had been doing this longer than he had ever thought she would last. He saw no reason to believe, even given the recent betrayals, that she wouldn't be able to continue to hold it together.

At least keep herself operational long enough that they can revive the program and eventually he won't need to worry about her fragile psyche any more. About the day when his well-worn favorite toy was finally broken.

He then looked at the Joker in his right hand with no markings whatsoever in any of it's four corners. He hadn't added anyone to his Omaha list in a long time. Since becoming Director he hadn't been quite as closely involved in the ongoing research or recruitment as before. He was one of the few people who even knew which agents were Omaha operatives. Including the operatives themselves.

Diving back in could wait until the project's final phase became operational. Of his previous recruits, Walker was the only agent who had earned that 'Ace of Aces' distinction. At least until they could reconstruct his desired version of what they now called The Intersect and use what they had learned to build the Cipher 2.0 to achieve what Project Omaha had set out to do.

He tore the pristine Joker card in half as he had done with Larkin's Jack of Hearts and reunited the two cards in the document destruction bin. He didn't need it. Would never need it. Soon he would have a small army of wild cards.

One day soon, he can simply make several more just like her.

Graham placed the card bearing Charles Bartowski's obscured initials and Sarah Walker's clearly printed ones back in the worn and tattered box, poured another drink and waited for her to contact him from the LA substation. He grinned against his glass as he thought about just what this Bartowski had coming for him.

_Wait until Larkin's little friend has to deal with a true wild card._

Not simply someone unpredictable as the phrase was often flippantly intended but someone who could do what she had done in Budapest. Dozens of missions in dozens of other cities across the globe just like it or worse. Dozen of missions where she had been the only one to walk away, almost always completely unscathed.

Death incarnate.

Someone very few people even knew by the same name. Someone he himself had known by over a hundred cover identities. As Jenny. As Sarah. Template 34. Subject Zero. Seven of spades. Wild Card.

Enforcer.

She would never realize just how much he had manipulated the lives, actions and even thought processes of over three dozen agents, none more than her. She never could have become the legendary figure she was without him pulling the strings. If the choices had truly been hers, she likely would have ended up someone entirely different.

What a waste that would have been.

Once rebuilt, the Cipher 2.0 would make the process that much easier, but with the lucky coincidences and hard work required to mold her he would always regard her as his greatest creation. The agent who should not be had ultimately become the agent without a name; the agent that all others feared.

Graham returned to his desk as one of three phones buzzed, knowing that his assistant had been instructed to only allow a call from one person through. She would have this mess resolved for him in no time.

She _was_ a monster. But she was _his_ monster.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

END OF SUBROUTINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Thank you again to everyone who has stuck with me and read this extremely long prologue! In two weeks, see you all in Burbank for Sarah Walker's next mission and the beginning of our story proper...


	5. V: Waxing Nostalgic

Becoming

.

BOOK ONE

.

"Complications"

.

* * *

"Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected,

unplanned by me."

\- Carl Sandburg

* * *

.

General A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read and especially those who have been so supportive. You will likely find it a relief that future installments will less frequently be of the single mega-chapter variety. But wouldn't it be disappointing if you saw an update on this story and it were only 2,500 words? I am assuming your answer is 'Yes' and hoping it isn't 'No' because I still intend to publish 10K+ installments - hopefully every two weeks - but will be more regularly breaking them into many smaller, more manageable chapters.

Those of you who have the opportunity and inclination to power through the whole 'set', feel free to do so. Those of you who do not will more often than not have the ability to read an entire chapter (or two) then return as needed or desired to complete the remaining chapters. I have also modified the story categories after checking with a few people and confirming that it wasn't really _THAT_ angsty. No, I did not take that as a challenge but instead changed 'Angst' to 'Drama' (though neither is entirely accurate).

I had always planned to add 'Romance' at this point (having also added someone to the character list). Some of you are already starting to see the point of this story. But to be clear, we have all already seen the perspective of a nerd who thinks he is unworthy of the quintessential video game / comic book goddess and ultimately finds much more to her. This is the perspective of the reluctant assassin who thinks there's no going back and that _she_ is unworthy of the kind, clever, funny, sweet man she finds herself assigned to protect. The folly of thinking of others as too perfect and yourself as too imperfect. The wt/wt of canon is treated here as less 'will they' and more 'why they don't'.

I obviously have little experience with such things but I imagine there is nothing more daunting, terrifying and nauseating for a writer than realizing you have put yourself in a position where you decide the most appropriate course of action is to actually type the words "Book One".

So it begins.

Again.

(Derp!)

.

* * *

Part V: Waxing Nostalgic

* * *

.

...in which our protagonist reflects on her former partner's death, events from her childhood and the nature of identity on her way to confront her next target - a man who is not at all what she expected...

Canon Timeline Reference: earlier parts of 'Chuck vs. the Intersect' (aka 'the Pilot'; episode 1.01) including federally mandated meet cute scene including minor flashback elements of 'Nacho Sampler' (episode 3.06) and through second (non-ninja) meeting. Also includes a reference to a somewhat 'throwaway' line from 'Angel de la Muerte' (episode 3.03).

Contents: Hurray! Five chapters, all short(-ish); the longest is _barely_ over 3K words but it's over 12K in total; digest as you see fit!

A/N: I have modified the floor plan of Sarah's hotel suite slightly for reasons that will become apparent later while - hopefully - not upsetting anyone's mental image. It's still very white and green.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: No ownership of, or claim to the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, in this part, no ownership of, or claim to James Bond (it's so genericized I'm not sure it needs to be called out) or _You_ _Only Live Twice, _specifically (Ian Fleming novel), any sexy bespectacled villainesses from _G.I._ _Joe_, the _Batman_ movie (1989 Tim Burton version) and it's sequel, Batman in general, Tim Burton films in general, oh hell - any DC or Marvel comics, somewhat similar comic book related conversations in _Kill Bill vol. 2_, the entire Indiana Jones franchise (except anything with Shia LeBouf - blech!), Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_, or any song by Ani DiFranco, Bon Jovi or Smashing Pumpkins is asserted or implied. (phew!)

.

* * *

.

007: This Mortal Coil

Interstate 5, Southbound, 30 miles north of Los Angeles; Wed Sept 19, 2007 1:36 pm

.

Bryce is dead.

Just past Santa Clarita, the physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted woman once again calling herself Sarah Walker exited the 5, made an immediate U-turn and got right back on - now heading in the opposite direction. She made arrangements with Graham to visit his LA substation to collect more background intel for an urgent intelligence gathering operation focused on the man with whom Bryce was apparently working.

Someone named Bartowski.

She hung up with Graham and tried to take the opportunity to get her head straight.

As she racked her brain attempting to recall what little she really knew about her partner, she couldn't remember Bryce ever mentioning anyone named Bartowski from his past. She knew Bryce at least claimed to be an orphan - _Just like James Bond_ he liked to say citing a story called _You Only Live Twice_ \- and matter-of-factly said he was a trust fund baby. But he also said he had severed all ties to his former life. That was why he didn't care that people knew his real name.

In her experience, that was not an uncommon opinion of an agent. They were either like Bryce, feeling as though they had nothing to lose and not caring to hide who they once were because it meant nothing to them or, like her, didn't want to reveal anything of themselves due to ties that could be used against them or other ghosts of their pasts.

She realized, as she considered what that might mean, that she really didn't know with any certainty if his parents actually were dead or if one or both were alive but estranged from their son. It was unlikely that he intended to cut ties to protect the people that were important to him or he wouldn't have kept his birth name. She didn't know for certain if there were parents or siblings or even friends who would miss and mourn him.

But neither had she shared such things with him.

She was in the hyper-alert yet clinically detached state of mind he had often referred to as 'Agent Mode' and found herself to be more angry than sad to learn that Bryce had been killed. They had been partners off and on for over two years. Both of them were frequently assigned individually to separate missions for extended periods but Graham liked to pair them up nearly as often. Graham said they leveled each other out. Bryce had spent nearly half that first year trying to get in her pants. Not in an obnoxious constant way but every time she thought he had given up he dialed up the charm again.

Most of it was relatively tame, typical nonsense that made her roll her eyes but he did occasionally make her smile. On one such occasion, when he had managed to coax a single sharp bark of a laugh out of her, he had let it slip that he got his best material from one of his brothers. It had only stood out to her as odd because he had previously said other small things that implied that he was an only child and the mood had immediately cooled at the apparent lie.

She just assumed he was as private as she was - that he didn't want to share his past either - and was so used to lying that he eventually contradicted himself. That he either didn't care enough to worry about it or was comfortable enough around her to not worry about the contradiction.

She didn't know which was true but he would have been right to not be worried about it. She felt no need to pry or even care, really, about his parents or any potential siblings.

Some ghosts were better left alone.

Sure, he was undeniably very attractive but she had wanted to remain professional; she hadn't even considered giving in to his advances until after a mission that provided a tense moment or two but honestly wasn't particularly harrowing or noteworthy in any special way other than being their first mission posing as a married couple.

After two solid days of travel and emotional turmoil she really just wanted a long, hot bath. Or to sleep for a month. In whichever order she could manage. She checked into a luxury hotel 10 minutes north of her target under the name Sarah Walker. As a former teammate would say "What the hell, Uncle Sam's good for it." and it was just for a couple of days. But it felt unnatural to use that name. She was now on mission and she had never been Sarah Walker while on a mission.

She located her room on the eighth floor and checked the exit routes both conventional and less so. There was a large inviting bed that was beckoning her mockingly. It's gigantic green upholstered headboard which matched the two chairs flanking the table by the panoramic window was set off against a metallic silver wallpaper with stylized fleurs de lis. There was also a small sofa in this large front room, a decent sized bath with an equally inviting free-standing tub and a small but cozy sitting room / office behind the vanity opposite the bed that opened up to a small balcony she would have to more thoroughly explore later. She unpacked her gear and contemplated how to even begin to approach a mission as Sarah Walker.

Sarah Walker was not a fleshed out personality profile meant to be applied as a cover. Sarah Walker had a completely fake business degree from Columbia University with decent but not stellar grades, minimal security clearances and a sparse service record indicating more classified projects than individual actions and many periods of inactivity. At a glance she looked like an abandoned draft of a cover identity.

Her mission was simple enough in theory. Make contact with Bryce's accomplice, determine to where the massive amount of intelligence data had been transferred, recover the data and detain or eliminate anyone else involved. Unfortunately their intelligence on why and how Bryce had done what he had done was limited. She was going to have to play some things by ear.

She reluctantly conceded that Graham had been right about the two of them - at least as professional partners. It was times like these when Bryce would ordinarily be trying to keep things light. She was all about mission prep, he was all about staying loose and relaxed. She had initially been put off by his cockiness but he unerringly delivered in the field - achievement of mission objectives rather than adherence to the actual plan being the measuring stick - and that confidence wasn't unjustified.

Once she began to accept this as fact, his cockiness began to amuse her slightly and did keep her from getting overly wrapped up or stressing over details they had covered a dozen times. He would always say he had faith in their plans - usually meaning _her_ plans. He never coddled her or treated her as anything less than an equal partner. He did his part and trusted her to do hers. In that way, he always came through for her.

He was a walking, talking lucky charm.

Untouchable.

The Teflon man.

At least until last night.

Graham had informed her that the NSA security detail around this 'Intersect' had shot him once in the chest as he exited the building. She could almost picture the laugh on his lips when he thought he was home free and winced at the mental image of his reaction when he was cut down with his freedom in sight. She wondered if he had skimped on his planning. If, had he trusted her to help him, her attention to detail would have made a difference.

Then she remembered that it had been a rogue action with an unknown motivation. That he had betrayed her not only personally but also professionally by betraying the nation for which she had sacrificed so much.

He was shot in the act of stealing intelligence from a top secret government facility. If it had been her standing outside as he fled the building, and if he had refused to stand down, she would have shot him herself.

She had never thought it would come to that but she had a duty to uphold. The life of an agent was only partly as advertised with a much darker side she should have anticipated but she had taken pride in discovering that she was the person best suited to bear such burdens. It was the thing that she clung to - that when all the politicking and individual agendas were stripped away her actions had - _in spite_ of some of those in positions of authority and their various agendas - preserved the lives of ordinary Americans in ways they would never appreciate or understand. That all she had done had meant _something_.

After all she had done she simply _had_ to believe that - the alternative was too horrifying to even consider. In the end, the choice would have been simple.

It would have been no choice at all.

.

* * *

.

She followed Graham's instructions and drove to a nondescript building in downtown Los Angeles where she checked in using the code phrase he had given her. She was familiar with this unofficial field office and followed the convoluted protocols through the bowels of the building to reach the isolated area that housed Graham's designated contact to review any additional intel to plan her approach.

It was all very rushed and that made her even more uncomfortable. She had no acceptable clean clothes with her and, driven by exhaustion, bullied the one female analyst into swapping outfits with her. She had an inspired idea to minimize the memory of her unexpected arrival and softened the blow by commenting on how good her clothes looked on the young woman as they changed side-by-side in the ladies room.

She suggested that the analyst shake out her long, dark hair and felt strange satisfaction at how confident the analyst seemed when she replaced her glasses out of necessity and made a comment about looking like a 'baroness'. A comment that caused a niggle in her memory she couldn't quite place but that was quickly replaced by even more satisfaction. This time at the success of her plan when the other two analysts paid more attention to their colleague - now standing equal to her in height due to their fortuitously switchable shoes and decked out in her discarded all black outfit - than to the agent upon their return from the restroom.

For her part, the analyst - so recently objecting over sacrificing her own outfit - now seemed quite pleased with the attentions of one of her colleagues in particular.

Small victories were something to cherish in the shadow of a partnership blown to pieces. She was a planner and she felt like she had been on her heels for a few weeks now. She felt unsettled and was having a hard time focusing but in order to restore some illusion of order to her life she needed to resolve the mess her former partner made.

Her dead partner.

Her dead lover.

She wasn't even sure how to describe him. Bryce had never been her 'boyfriend' and they never 'dated'. At least they had never discussed such things. There was a brief period of time when she had briefly thought she might have been in love with him until reality convinced her otherwise. But they had traveled the world together without crowding each other or prying into each others' pasts. Provided some fleeting physical comfort to each other in a world of madness and lies. Gotten into - and out of - thrilling adventures together.

They were a formidable team. It was everything she thought she craved as a young girl but there was something undefinable missing. And she found that she resented him for not considering the fact that his actions had left her here alone.

That he had taken the easy way out. She thought for a moment that she was being unfair, but it seemed more unfair that she now had no one she could trust to have her back. But it occurred to her, that despite his professional dependability, he had never been particularly considerate or even very kind.

He wasn't remotely faithful but she never asked or expected him to be. He had no problem with suggesting that she seduce a mark to achieve their objectives. No jealousy on the rare occasions when she agreed it was the most practical course of action. He had no problem volunteering to do the same and often lived out his juvenile James Bond fantasies. Whether this was strictly necessary was often debatable but never debated.

She knew he reveled in it but he usually had the courtesy not to flaunt it. When he found something objectionable about one of his marks he whined like a petulant child. She knew he slept around when they were parted for separate assignments. For her part, she was technically faithful but it was more out of a combination of convenience, patience and disillusionment rather than any real devotion.

But he usually didn't give her any shit over anything she had done in her past - the things she had done to complete _her_ missions - and she had never questioned his actions. Until now. And now that she did she wondered if the man who had never let her down had actually let her down completely.

The only thing they had shared was a reluctance to share anything. What she had considered a good partner was a far cry from what anyone should hope for in a good friend much less a lover or a boyfriend.

And she had been alone all along.

.

* * *

.

As she rolled into the parking lot of the Buy More she was still receiving intel from the field office she had just left. "So you think this kid's got the Intersect?" she asked of the analyst on the other end of her call. It amused her slightly that she automatically referred to her target as a kid based on his age and history despite the fact that he was nearly a year older than her. She may be younger but she had seen things he cannot possibly imagine.

She had been surprised that the analyst she coordinated with even knew the name of the project but that was apparently all he knew about it. The name and that her former partner was the center point of their investigation. "That's right, Agent Walker. He's connected to Bryce Larkin."

He was the only analyst of the three she had met who was cleared to work with her on this. Handpicked by Graham who had been on their conference call from the substation earlier. "Weaknesses?"

The analyst had been focused on gathering the life story of her target - Charles Irving Bartowski. She thought it sounded like a pretentious name. Bartowski was originally from Connecticut but relocated to Southern California in his youth. As intel continued to come in she found she had become numb to the fact that she was learning as much about Bryce as she was about Bartowski. Information that people in an intimate relationship should know about each other. The lack of that knowledge only reinforced a long-brewing realization that - apart from the physical - their so-called relationship had been anything but intimate.

Among those facts were that Bryce, too, was originally from Connecticut. And had attended Stanford as her target had. Some sort of supposed computer prodigy who had been expelled in his senior year.

_Great. A computer geek who not only did something bad enough to be expelled but had suffered the added indignity of being incompetent enough to get caught._

Bryce had rarely made questionable decisions - or at least decisions that turned out to be questionable - but this was looking like the second in two days.

There didn't seem to be any indication of a connection in the intervening years - between residing in the same state and going to the same university - but she didn't want to rule anything out. Maybe Bartowski came from money like Bryce had and that was their connection. That could mean powerful people might become involved at some point in her investigation but she didn't want to speculate. And she discounted that idea entirely as she looked up at the green and gold Buy More logo over the retail electronics store.

"Bright. But an underachiever." The connection to Bryce was growing more tenuous as she stepped through the sliding glass doors and into retail hell.

"Lonely. Had his heart broken and never got over it." Now _that_ she could work with.

"I'm uploading his picture now." Cute but goofy, was her unfiltered reaction. With a pleasant smile and unruly, curly brown hair he looked like a nice enough, unassuming person. Just the type Bryce could have easily manipulated. If Bryce could play him he should be putty in her hands.

She reached into her purse and extracted the 'broken' Intercell phone that the field office had provided her as an excuse for approaching her target. Before she ended her call and put away her fully functioning Blackberry she said without thinking "Piece of cake."

She visibly cringed when she realized what she had said.

.

* * *

.

008: Piece of Cake

Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Mon Jun 15, 1992 7:35 pm

.

"Got that, Darlin'?"

Her father had just told her their plans for next weekend. She was Katie O'Connell here. There was a music festival called _Summerfest_ starting next weekend which meant lots of people. Lots of distracted and impaired people.

She didn't like this one. There was no art to it. It was straight stealing. Katie would pull the lost kid routine or otherwise create distractions and give him a chance to lift wallets and unattended bags. Her pickpocketing was just as good but, to his credit, he preferred Katie not be the one caught red handed as it were. She liked to think of her other self in the third person when she didn't like what she was doing. It was a practice that would help her compartmentalize far more objectionable actions as an adult.

"Sure Dad." she said. "Piece of cake."

"Never say anything is a piece of cake." He snapped at her as she knew he would. "Just like you never say you're pulling 'one last con'. You'll jinx it."

She knew that too. She didn't believe a word of it - she didn't have a superstitious bone in her body - but she remembered everything he'd ever said. She had just dared to hope that one specific word would give him an opening to say something clever and surprise her. It did happen sometimes. Often, in fact - he was a pretty clever guy. It just didn't this time.

Instead he looked down at her ankles and noted the hem of her jeans was at least two inches higher than it should be. She had noticed too but didn't want to say anything. She had grown six inches in the past eight months but outgrowing clothes meant buying new or new-ish clothes which meant spending money. Money he had earmarked for setting up their next con or their next life. Money that had been uncharacteristically short recently.

"Dammit, you're getting too damn tall to pull these jobs." he muttered mostly to himself.

_Well, yeah..._ she thought _I'm TEN now_.

"We'll have to retire some of the old standbys soon. You're starting to stand out." Her father looked at her squarely in the face and smiled before his face went blank as though he was seeing her for the first time. "And we can't have you looking so pretty that people will remember you."

She was elated for a millisecond that her father had called her pretty until she realized it was couched in a negative. Until he turned it around on her as something she would have to conceal.

She had been thinking about asking him if she could start wearing make up. Just a little lip gloss or something. She hung out with a few 12 and 13 year old girls around the run-down apartment complex. She knew she was tall for her age and she had always been more comfortable with older kids so she simply fit in - as much as she could while lying to them about who she really was - more accurately, she just didn't stand out. Those girls wore make up. Those girls had told her she was pretty. Or would be one day. But make up was another expense she knew wasn't in her father's plans. And her father preferred her to be inconspicuous.

Being inconspicuous meant not looking like a street urchin but also no makeup or anything else she saw the other girls experimenting with. Her first priority was to blend into the background as much as possible and, if the shit went down, become a ghost.

He stood up and began to put on his jacket and she suddenly knew the words she was waiting to hear weren't going to come. To be fair, they had changed identities a lot recently and it was pretty confusing sometimes. They had already celebrated last month but she had still hoped he would remember. For the last two years they had celebrated both the false and the true.

"I've gotta go see a guy about a potential job." The way he said 'job', Katie knew he didn't mean actual employment. "I'll probably be late so you'll have to make yourself some dinner, Darlin'."

He did lean in to kiss her on the crown of her head and tussle her hair on his way out as he often did, but that was that.

She wasn't hungry anymore. Especially not for cake.

She decided to go for a walk instead and, after a few hours of making her usual rounds (which included a convenience store with a small gap between the back of the cigarette cage and the chip rack that most adults wouldn't be able to fit their hand through), ended up sneaking into the movie theater eight blocks away.

She hadn't had much opportunity to see many movies over the past couple of years usually only even having a TV when they stayed in hotels. Televisions were inconvenient luxuries when you might have to skip town at a moment's notice.

But there's a boy named Tommy that works here and the two of them have an arrangement. She steals cigarettes for him and when he's working the booth or even sees her outside he lets her in without a ticket whenever she wants. She had deftly pocketed a pack of Camels for him and pale pink lip gloss as a present for herself before deliberately being shooed out of the store for something _other_ than shoplifting by speed-reading half their magazines And making a big show of doing so.

This theater already received its prints for next weekend's premier of the new Batman movie - the sequel to the one she saw three years ago when she was still the girl she was born as - and the employees are watching it tonight after midnight. They all know her and don't question her presence, curled up alone in the corner of the back row.

She likes the back row. She can sit there unmolested and observe. Tonight it's just employees and their friends from school all gathered in the center of the fifth, sixth and seventh rows rather than her preferred regular crowd. The boys and girls on awkward dates, the established couples far more comfortable with one another, the rowdy groups of teenage boys pathetically trying to impress each other and any girl or woman that encroaches into their air space.

And the people who are like her. The few loners who just want to see the film but who might occasionally - if struck with a bout of honesty with themselves - admit they wished they had someone with them. Someone who shared their interests and would sit comfortably and enjoy the same things or argue a particular point or laugh with them in the wrong places due to some secret joke. Someone who _knew_ them. Someone who knew _her_.

But she hadn't found that here - just those few girls at the apartment complex that she hung out with occasionally who talk incessantly about boys she doesn't know, and teachers she doesn't know and crappy bands she doesn't listen to. TV shows she's never seen and certainly not the hundreds of books _she_ has read in their place for entertainment. She hadn't bothered to enroll in school when they moved here so near to the end of the previous school year. In a couple of months they would likely move on. Sooner if this job her father had mentioned went smoothly. Even sooner if it went badly.

Maybe things would be different in their next city. Their next life.

A few employees were very excited about the film and decided to start a little earlier than the promised 'midnight showing'. The lights dimmed and the film started to roll and she fed herself a fist full of popcorn. She had agonized for ten minutes over the decision to spend a couple of dollars on a small box of popcorn that passes for the dinner she skipped but she figured she deserved a treat before the clock struck midnight.

Tommy's girlfriend, Gina, works the concessions counter and, with a pitying smile, ended up giving her their largest size completely free of charge.

After all, it's her birthday.

.

* * *

.

009: Vicki Vale

Buy More, Nerd Herd Desk, Burbank, CA; Wed Sept 19, 2007 4:38 pm

.

"Stop the presses. It's Vicki Vale." the shorter, bearded man had let spill from his mouth. Her target hadn't even noticed her. Or was making a good show of deliberately not noticing her.

She already had Bryce and her father floating around inside her head and hearing those precise words dredged up another long buried memory. It was one of her few memories of what she mockingly thought of as her 'real life' and one of the last ones. It was somewhat random but she associated it with her mother. The woman she had just seen earlier this morning for the first time in eighteen years and would likely never see again.

.

* * *

.

Geneva, Illinois; Fri Jun 23, 1989 6:45 pm

.

She had just turned seven years old and Mom let her go to the movies with a group of eight friends from the neighborhood ranging in age from seven to thirteen. To be honest, - _and you must always be honest, sweetie_ \- the group ranged from about nine and a half to thirteen years old; she was by far the youngest.

The theater was only two blocks away from the tiny little house they shared with her grandmother since her Mom and Dad had split up. She went to that theater so often that Mom didn't give it a second thought when her favorite companion had been around to accompany her. Now she still allowed it as long as Janet, the oldest girl who sometimes babysat if Gran was feeling particularly unwell, was there.

Dad still came around to visit from time to time and took her for ice cream though Mom and Gran didn't like for her to go off alone with him. Sometimes he'd come by after her bed time on nights Mom had class and she would sneak out her window for some too-short secret adventure.

She had told her Mom they were going to see _Honey, I Shrunk the Kids_ which she would swear to this day was definitely _not_ a lie. She had specifically said – "May I go? _They're_ going to see _Honey, I Shrunk the Kids_." And 'they' _were_ going to see that movie - if you knew that 'they' meant three of the five girls. The three boys, Janet and Janet's little sister were going to see _Batman_. And so was she.

Mom told her she was super smart and had pushed to move her up to first grade when she was already able to read to herself at an unusually high level for her age when she enrolled in kindergarten. Mom let her hang out with the older kids because she thought the other kids her age - or even those a year older now - were 'babies' and Mom said she was responsible enough that she trusted her. Mom called her an 'old soul'.

Dad told her she was smart too but Dad was an entirely different kind of smart. Dad played games with her all the time saying one thing but meaning something different than what you had inferred from the words themselves. "You have to be careful with people..." he had told her "...there are all kinds of ways to lie."

_Batman_ was rated PG-13, which was apparently a big deal to Mom. Since she was such an avid reader, Mom loved that she read at such a high level and she had a preference for the classics she had argued that if she could read about more mature themes she should be able to see movies that contained the same types of things. Mom smiled brightly at that and said she appreciated the quality of her argument but she wasn't comfortable with all the violence she thought PG-13 movies contained.

She thought G-rated movies were boring. She liked some of the Disney movies but didn't think you had to see them in a theater. She thought the Disney princess movies were cute but wished the princesses didn't have to be rescued so much. If she were Sleeping Beauty she would have wanted to be the one to fight that witch when she turned into a dragon instead of just waiting around for a kiss to bring her back to life. And she wished that the princes who supposedly personified all the princesses' hopes and dreams could be more than grinning cardboard cutouts. She just didn't see why the girls had to run off with them and immediately get married.

Mom was OK with her seeing PG movies because Mom said she didn't really object to anything in them and would just sit next to her. But reactions to that second Indiana Jones movie had really screwed things up for her.

David's big brother had all the best TV equipment. He was even planning on getting _Star Wars_ on Laserdisc and she was looking forward to seeing it. But they had all already seen the first two Indiana Jones movies on BetaMax. Apparently a bunch of parents thought the second one - and some other recent movies - were too violent and a stronger rating was needed for future films.

She had rewatched both movies with the same group of kids before sneaking into the theater with the bolder ones to see the third movie a few weeks ago. She loved the fantastical adventure of it all. The globe trotting she had realized was possible when she was told her own home town shared a name with a city in Switzerland - also by a lake, that the historic windmill everyone around here knew was based on those in _another_ nearby country called Holland and that _both_ of those countries were just a small part of a place called Europe.

She read everything she could get her hands on about other places and hoped one day she would be able to visit them all and do something even half as exciting and important as Indiana Jones. This third movie was pretty funny too with things she thought her Dad would appreciate - bluffing about the guy who got lost in his own museum, stealing his nickname from the family dog, the trick of knowing what sort of cup a humble carpenter might have - and she was especially fascinated by the idea that something like that cup could save someone's life. And it was fun that he got to run off with his dad and have this adventure - something she herself had been considering.

But they had to sneak in because it was rated PG-13. PG-13 and it wasn't even all that violent.

PG-13 was the bane of her young existence.

But she had been waiting patiently for _Batman_ since she heard the regulars talking about it at the comic book store she still frequented. The _Beetlejuice_ guy was directing it, they had told her, so hopes were high that it would have the right feel for the Dark Knight. Of course, the silly guy who played Beetlejuice himself was cast as Batman and that was a cause for some concern.

She liked Batman. He didn't get bitten by a spider or stand too close to a Gamma bomb or stumble across a power ring or take a super-soldier serum. Although she stopped to consider that only the first three were really accidents. She did have some respect for the Captain - he had made the choice to become a super soldier even if he really hadn't had to work for his powers afterwards.

Bruce Wayne had decided he wanted to fight crime and molded himself into a super hero with no actual super powers. How scary would that be? To face off against super-villains with no crutch of invincibility or super-strength, just your own resourcefulness and the skills you taught yourself. David said he was driven into it, that it was his destiny, but she said that he chose it. They agreed to disagree.

Even though he was almost the complete opposite, she also liked Superman. Not the comics themselves so much but the idea of him. And not the more recent portrayals, she liked the older comics. The ones where he was different from the rest and embraced it even though it meant he would never really fit in.

He _was_ Superman. His real name, that no one on Earth knew, was Kal-El. When he changed into his alter ego he didn't become the super version of himself like all the others, he became Clark Kent. When he hid his true self he tried to become someone _normal_. Why would you ever want to be normal if you could be a superhero?

If his secret identity was ever exposed people would foolishly say that Clark Kent was Superman but they would be oblivious to the truth.

There was no Clark Kent.

She often wondered if she was already who she was born to be or did she need to _become_ who she was meant to be. Was there an inescapable destiny for her, as David believed, or were there important choices yet to be made?

She liked some of the female super heroes too; Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Jean Grey, Ms. Marvel. They were strong and incredibly beautiful but they just didn't get the same quality of stories as the guys. That was one of the things she was looking forward to seeing in the Batman movie. The characters they had chosen to interact with Batman were the Joker (duh) and Vicki Vale.

Vicki Vale didn't get as much play as Lois Lane did in the Superman books but she was similar in that both reporters often came very close to uncovering the secret identities of their respective super heroes. She was like a detective and modeled after Marilyn Monroe. She was beautiful _and_ smart. What she thought a woman should be. Like her Mom.

.

* * *

.

As she walked home later, she thought about the movie and decided it was just OK. She didn't like that a young Joker was the one who killed Batman's parents. It was tidy for a movie but the whole point of Joe Chill - the man from the comics who 'really' killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of their young son - was that he was just some guy. A common street thug who had destroyed Bruce Wayne's world in a sudden and pointless act of violence. That's why Batman didn't fight _just_ super-villains like most other superheroes; he protected the citizens of Gotham from everyone.

And Alfred letting Vicki Vale into the Bat Cave was sacrilege. _No one_ gets into the Bat Cave. What good is a secret identity if you don't keep it secret?

Vicki herself was good and bad. She went into the movie looking forward to seeing a smart, beautiful woman. And she was definitely beautiful. Janet, who was old enough to start wearing make-up, called her 'show-stopper beautiful' and she agreed. Vicki was smart enough to figure out that Batman was Bruce Wayne - or vice versa - which was great but she found herself wishing Vicki wasn't portrayed as being so weak. Granted, a disfigured psychopath in clown makeup with a small army at his disposal was wreaking havoc all around her but she could have been a little tougher – not just a damsel in distress. Why _couldn't_ a woman be a kick ass super hero without super powers?

She caught a glimpse of her mother in the front window as she walked up the sidewalk, kicking the dirt as she pondered how to become a super hero, and reappraised what she thought a woman should be. Mom and Dad had fought often but never for very long - a lot more lately of course. At least Dad was fun. Obviously trying to compensate but he always had some crazy adventure planned for just the two of them every time he came to visit her. Mom was always so serious.

She usually went outside and didn't really listen to what they were saying when they fought. She didn't want to be part of it and didn't want to hear if she already was. If they were arguing about what she had done. So she pretended she didn't know what they were fighting about - although she could guess - but they yelled a lot. She often wondered if Mom would be happier without her around to remind her how things used to be and generally give her more to worry about.

She used to be greeted at the sidewalk. She used to not walk home alone. Everything had changed. Maybe it was time to change some more. At least Dad never hit Mom like Janet's dad but Mom never backed down. She doubted Dad would ever do such a thing but she knew Mom would never stand for it. She worked two jobs and went to night school to finish her degree to hopefully become a teacher while raising a kid and taking care of a sick mother. If Gran and herself weren't around Mom could do so much more. She shouldn't have to be so tough all the time.

And Mom wasn't a crime fighter but she _was_ tough. Tough as nails. Tough enough to start over if she left and the obviously inevitable happened to Gran. Even after the events of the past few months she had never seen her Mom cry.

Beautiful, smart _and_ tough. That's what she wanted to be.

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Nerd Herd Desk, Burbank, CA; Wed Sept 19, 2007 4:38 pm

.

The familiar memory had overtaken her for only a millisecond. It was such a part of her that she didn't have to relive it in its entirety to feel the full impact but she found it hard to break away from. Hard to believe there was a time when she fretted over movie ratings. Even went to movies. Or read comic books. Or had friends. Or even was a little girl.

When her mother personified responsibility and serious things and being trapped by them. When her dad personified fun and adventure and an escape from the harsh realities of the world.

She had always been smart. Life made her tough. The CIA made her beautiful.

And smarter.

And tougher.

She was everything she ever thought she wanted to be and she felt completely empty. Her lack of emotion over Bryce's death was all the evidence she needed that her soul had been hollowed out somewhere along the way.

She shouldn't have come straight here.

She should have taken more time to get her head straight but Graham had been adamant that time was a luxury they didn't have.

"Vicki Vale – Vic-a-Vicki Vale – Vicki Vale – Vikkity – Vikkity Vale"

She shook off the memory and approached the man with the curly hair from the picture. He was pressing a telephone receiver between his ear and his shoulder and holding a manilla folder in his hands, rapping about a relatively obscure comic book character that Sarah Walker should know nothing about.

Sarah Walker - the _real_ Sarah Walker - the one behind the beautiful mask - _that_ Sarah Walker would eat Vicki Vale alive.

And even then poor Vicki would be oblivious to the truth.

There was no Sarah Walker.

A predatory smile automatically morphed into something less sinister and more endearing as she stepped up to the counter and smiled. She felt the reassuring power of her CIA engineered presence when she approached her target. And felt immense satisfaction when his eyes met hers and he dropped both the phone and the folder.

She was _almost_ entirely unaffected by the adorably cute akimbo pose he clumsily struck when he realized he couldn't disguise how stunned he had been by the mere sight of her.

.

* * *

.

010: Disarm You With a Smile

Buy More; Nerd Herd Desk; Wed Sept 19, 2007 4:39 pm

.

The stress of the past few days is getting to her. Try as she might to push it all out of her mind, seeing her mother stirred up all kinds of shit she thought long since buried. Bryce's death had apparently shocked her into numbness. She was a raw nerve and planned to take it out on the person Bryce was conspiring with to betray her, the government and anyone else on whose behalf she could find it in herself to be indignant.

Her smile was automatic as her target dropped the items he was holding. She could see she had already had an effect on him and he looked a bit like a little boy caught doing something he shouldn't be. Maybe he didn't expect to be found so soon and she couldn't let his adorably clumsy reaction to her lull her in. So she mentally girded herself for battle and deliberately thought to herself: _OK, Bryce. Let's see what this partner of yours is made of_.

After she sarcastically apologized for interrupting, he stammered an excuse for his Vicki Vale rap and she heard herself respond without thinking "Because that makes it better." She hoped it rattled him a bit so she could gauge his reaction but she had intended to come off sweeter, more demure. She had let too much of her true self slip through and needed to focus.

Rather than the embarrassed reaction she expected he just smiled an earnest, engaging and slightly relieved smile back at her - clearly appreciating her mild level of snark.

It was disconcerting.

She sized him up quickly and, from his unruly hair to his gangly frame, he seemed to be still growing into himself at the age of barely twenty-six. But his eyes sparkled with equal measures of mischief and warmth and that sweet smile drew her back in as he - and his coworker who was gawking at her more openly than her target - made their introductions.

He had recovered from the stammering beginning and found his feet. It wasn't lost on her that he had quickly and subtly sized her up as well nor that his eyes then met hers and stayed focused there or glancing to her mouth as he listened intently to what she was saying rather than ogling her. He didn't seem terribly comfortable talking to her with her flirty act going but he wasn't frozen either.

Her own sarcastic sense of humor had seemed to work so she continued with it rather than abruptly shifting personalities. _Chuck and Morgan. And they're stuck with those. I've had some pretty bad ones but there's always next week_ \- but these were their names. Their real names. And they were comfortable in them. Something unfamiliar to her. As awkward as they thought they were, and as she expected them to be, in the presence of a beautiful woman their goofy banter was not forced - it was just _them_. And she found it strangely endearing.

Sarah Walker was as close as she got to a second skin. A go-to persona for simple activities, not utilized for a retrieval mission like this. As comfortable as an old sweat shirt. As far as the CIA was concerned Sarah Walker was a mid-level analyst with the vague title of 'Efficiency Expert' that rotated around the world performing internal reviews of field offices. Which as near as anyone could tell meant confiscating a prime office space, piling tons of papers on the desk and coming in to shuffle those papers a couple of times a week when she wasn't conducting field reviews.

She always operated under a different name when conducting the actual 'field reviews'.

But for most of the year, Sarah Walker disappeared from the face of the Earth entirely and, to fill the void created in the universe, another woman with a different name appeared, usually in some remote and dangerous location. Occasionally with a similar appearance but usually not. Sarah Walker was more comfortable than any of those assassins, thieves and seductresses. But Sarah Walker doesn't exist and using that name in front of this man leaves her feeling somehow exposed. Like she has already been caught in a lie.

She really just wants to size him up, determine if he's hiding a dangerous agent under this goofy, friendly persona. She's really good at that. She learned it at her father's knee long before the CIA got their hooks into her and her life often depends upon it. The geeks at the field office told her the phone fix they staged for her would probably take one of _these_ geeks 10 to 15 minutes to fix. She shouldn't need half that time. She doesn't get one tenth.

She had indulged herself for a second watching him delicately curl his lip around the already removed phone backing. He held it softly between his lips while he dexterously fiddled with a small screw driver in one hand and the remainder of the phone in the other. By the time her attention was back on his eyes they were staring right back at her as he handed the now fully-functional phone back to her. She estimated it took less than 20 seconds. And he had been distracted and babbling with part of a cell phone in his mouth all of those few seconds.

Now she was just starting to get irritated. But, after gently correcting her use of 'geek' versus 'nerd' - and she wasn't sure if it were a branding distinction of the store or any real, technical distinction - he just flashed that sweet smile and looked down at her. And maybe the fact that he _was_ looking down at her was part of what was getting on her nerves.

_Why'd he have to be so damn tall?_ Height was something she had always used as an advantage in her interactions with men. In her heels she was on eye level with most and towered over some and these borrowed shoes were lower than her preferred heels for something like this.

Her mind scrambled to maintain her dwindling advantage. _If I can get him to step off that riser I'll bet we'll be on the same level and...Oh..._

There was no riser.

He had simply stepped through the entry gap, walked around the circular desk and now stood directly in front of her. He was easily 6' 4" and their height difference was even more exaggerated now that they were so close to one another and he was looking down into her eyes with the most sincere smile she had ever seen.

She could smell the faint scent of some earthy-citrusy soap and felt warmth radiating off of him. Both his personality and actual, physical heat. He was tall and slim with not-very-muscular but still broad shoulders. He might even be imposing if he stood at his full height but he hunched slightly because keeping his eyes on the horizon would leave him looking over the heads of everyone and it only had the effect of making him seem more approachable.

She had the random thought - this seemed to be the day for it - that they would fit together perfectly if they danced. Not like Bryce. She wore flats or low heels as often as possible to avoid embarrassing him. Bryce wasn't short, in fact he was taller than average. But she was unusually tall and he always seemed self conscious about it.

This man had power to his presence though he didn't seem to know it. Maybe it was some sort of sales technique because he didn't seem like a trained agent - his attention was too focused on the task at hand - on her - rather than everything else going on around him. She was trying to find a concise way to describe him, so open and earnest, she reassessed that no matter how tall he stood he would never be imposing. He was too..._sweet_...for that.

When she approached the desk she had felt in control of the situation. She realized too late that she had somehow completely lost any advantage she may have had.

She sensed more than saw someone approaching out of the corner of her eye. How had Bartowski noticed the man and she hadn't? That wasn't entirely accurate; she had noticed but she had automatically classified the man as a harried customer and dismissed him as a potential threat. Bartowski may or may not have been coming around the desk to talk to her but his attention was now diverted to the frantic man now interrupting them. Where she saw only threats and non-threats and had already relegated the man to the grey faceless horde that didn't warrant her attention, Bartowski apparently saw someone who needed help.

And this man needed all kinds of help. He reminded her of why she didn't focus too much on the individuals that made up the world she was sworn to protect. What an idiot. Even she knew to check whether a device required a specific recording medium or not. Although she had likely used more different recording devices in her life than this guy even knew existed.

She had hoped that Bartowski - her target, she reminded herself - would hand the customer off to someone else and get back to her. He had seemed to consider doing just that for a moment but made the unexpected decision. At least he seemed to have done so slightly reluctantly. Maybe if he hadn't looked down at the little girl she would have stood a chance.

No one is this nice. Not that she's ever seen. Not only has he taken the time to help this father save a priceless memory - and likely his own ass if he had returned home empty handed - but he seems to be having a fantastic time doing it.

This is fun to him. She couldn't remember the last time she had experienced something she would describe as fun. Exhilarating and dangerous were her usual substitutes. And as much fun as he seems to be having it was also remarkably kind of him.

As she looked around at the racks of merchandise and carefully designed yet completely predictable advertisements she realized there probably aren't many opportunities to make these kinds of grand gestures. He's obviously smart and kind and he's probably bored out of his mind 99% of the time. He jumped at the opportunity to exercise some creativity to make a little girl feel like a princess. Not only did he jump at the opportunity, he left an attractive woman who was clearly throwing him all the right signs in order to do so. How many men had she met in her entire life that would make that choice?

Exactly zero until today.

He had rallied his troops in a matter of moments to recreate the little girl's dance recital. This was interesting. It was yet another facet of him. He was no less kind or polite but he was clearly in command here. She was reasonably certain that he didn't even realize that within moments - thanks to an Asian girl with heavy makeup dressed similarly to Bartowski except for the ridiculously short skirt - the conversation between he and the little ballerina was currently being broadcast on every screen in the store.

Morgan, as the shorter, bearded man in the green polo shirt had introduced himself moments ago, was directing traffic and clearing the scene as though he were a stage manager while directing the others to set up a second camera for a redundant recording. Two arguing men were attempting to set up music for the performance - one was young, short, thin and apparently of Indian descent; the other bigger and older with thinning hair and bleary eyes. Wires had apparently been crossed as the music was not yet audible but the video broadcast was currently complete with audio of the conversation between Bartowski and the little girl being carried over the store's PA system.

With all the chaos of his coworkers around them, Bartowski's attention was solely focused on the little girl. She had been on the verge of tears moments ago but now looked to be a combination of excited and scared that was very familiar to the government agent who had introduced herself as 'Sarah'. She smiled as she watched him patiently explain a few things to both father and daughter, ask a few questions of the father and generally fawn over the little girl. The longer he spoke the more excited and less scared the little girl seemed to be. It was the sweetest thing she had ever seen.

The broadcast of the conversation between Bartowski and the little girl over the PA had drawn the attention of the customers to the video wall. And the images of the tall man stooping down to speak to the little girl in a pink tutu and tights displayed on every screen on the wall of televisions had drawn a crowd of onlookers.

Bartowski seemed oblivious to his audience as he knelt down to reassure the little girl who was apparently unaccustomed to the spotlight as she explained _why_ she was never in the front at dance recitals.

And then he said it. For everyone in the store to hear.

The most beautiful lie she had ever heard: "Real ballerinas _are_ tall."

It hit too close to home. And she realized that in the last ten minutes she had mentally referred to a suspected terrorist as both adorable and sweet. This was _not_ going the way she had planned. He glanced over at her as though he had expected her to vanish. He smiled broadly when his eyes found hers and, when she smiled back at the overpowering and genuine warmth of it out of reflex rather than as a result of her training, she was shocked to realize that her pulse was higher than it had any right to be and she knew she had to get out of there.

Luckily, as he finished directing the impromptu solo ballet recital and thanking his colleagues for their help, her target was intercepted by a pompous coworker. She took the opportunity to extract one of her generic business cards from her borrowed purse, jotted a quick note and retreated to reassess her approach.

And the unexpected enigma that was Charles Irving Bartowski.

.

* * *

.

When she arrived back at her hotel room she threw her borrowed purse down on the bed in violent frustration. Bryce must have tipped him off. How else could he have known that she, specifically, was coming for him? Maybe they planned for multiple contingencies. And she cursed Bryce for revealing all those things he knew would bring up unsettling memories and throw her off her game. That was the only possible explanation and she was livid.

Her father. Vicki Vale. Real ballerinas are tall. That quiet stubborn confidence and presence he had underneath the stumbling facade.

As she closed her eyes and performed a couple of deep breathing exercises she was able to calm herself. She then realized that she herself had conjured up the memory of her father with a poor choice of words before she ever interacted with Bartowski.

The bearded guy in the green polo shirt was the one who brought up Vicki Vale and she couldn't fathom Bryce bringing in a third conspirator let alone one who worked in the same store as Bartowski. Multiple operatives working covers in the same retail store were bound to draw unwanted attention.

The fact that she was naturally attracted to tall men and the way he had used his physical presence against her could have been contrived if he were a trained agent but she was pretty sure he was not. And Bryce's pride wouldn't have permitted pulling that particular lever.

And whatever else was going on she was relatively certain that the ballerina was not in on it.

There wasn't any real evidence that any of what had just happened was contrived in any way. And that unsettled her more than if the entire affair had been staged. If she had felt the way she had because someone was working an angle that she could identify she could assess and react. But to react to someone like that - for them to seem to know and understand so much about you having never met you before - was difficult to process. Yet a bewildered smile was threatening to overtake her face as she relived the brief interaction in her mind.

As she stood at the panoramic windows of her bedroom looking out over the city skyline she had managed to almost completely quell her anger and frustration. She was still unsettled but in a strangely unfamiliar calm and carefree way until she also realized that she had never told Bryce any of those things that had seemed too coincidental not to have been staged.

They had never shared anything like that about their true selves. Only lived for their next mission and it had seemed like happiness for a time. She realized she had been prepared to hear that he was dead ever since he went off grid nearly three months ago but this was the first quiet moment she had found to contemplate it since she had been informed that he was, in fact, dead.

She stared out the window at nothing in particular as the reality of it set in and she finally accepted that she would never see him again. That their adventures together were over. He had been the only consistent presence in her life recently and his now-permanent absence left her feeling somewhat adrift. But consistency was the only thing she would miss. She had somehow come to think of him as reliable when he had, in fact, proven himself to be anything but.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. She decided to put it out of her mind, shower quickly and take a brief but much-needed nap. She would allow herself two hours. Then she would turn her attention to preparing for a little old fashioned B and E. Hopefully tonight she would find what she had been sent here to find so she could push all these unsettling thoughts and feelings deep down where they belonged.

And then she can get the hell out of Burbank.

.

* * *

.

011: Twelve More Hours

Buy More Plaza; Thurs Sept 20, 2007 12:45 pm

.

The agent currently going by the name Sarah Walker hated to fail at anything but the attempted retrieval of Bartowski's computer had been a mild disaster. The two friends from the Buy More had interrupted her and launched the most truly inept defense of personal property she could have possibly imagined. Bartowski's sidekick, as Sarah had come to think of the bearded coworker from the Buy More, had been the source of most of the damage inflicted on Bartowski himself - his attempted attacks providing her with ammunition that she easily deflected to collide with the taller man.

She smiled despite her frustration as she replayed the comedic sequence of events in her mind. If he were not the reason behind her visit to Burbank she would have felt sorry for him. Had he truly been an innocent bystander would so many of the deflected attacks have found their way into contact with the more sensitive parts of his body? It had been second nature but she suspected her uncanny aim and knowledge of the more vulnerable parts of the human anatomy had more than a little to do with it.

Bartowski was either very committed to a cover identity as a bumbling computer repair technician or was strictly an analyst for an unknown entity or other untrained resource that Bryce had trusted to transfer the Intersect programming. Based on his near complete absence of self-defense skills she suspected the latter. No matter how committed an agent was to a cover she could not fathom such a person so completely failing to protect themselves as Bartowski had the previous night.

She was surprised - and maybe a tiny bit insulted - that Bartowski hadn't taken the bait and called her. She knew she had an effect on him and tried to suppress the fact that the feeling had been somewhat mutual for reasons exceeding her ability to explain. She was on a clock and didn't really have time for him to be playing games trying not to look too eager.

She had assumed he would call that night - had waited for the call - right up until the other residents of his apartment had left for what looked like a date and given her an opportunity to break in. It was slightly unreasonable to think he would have called mere hours after meeting her. But to be completely honest with herself, that may have had a tiny contribution to the accuracy of her counter attacks last night.

But she had taken the time to finally get some sleep and gather herself and was now ready to reengage at his workplace. Bartowski had just arrived, walking from the Large Mart next door and looking somewhat frazzled, and she was briefing Graham on her progress. "I have eyes on him right now. And, like I said, the computer was destroyed. Beyond repair."

The physical damage was only part of the carnage. It honestly hadn't looked _that_ bad. She had tapped into the store's security cameras after her failed retrieval - breaking into the closed store and clipping in a basic transmitting device at a clearly labeled access panel. Disabling the store's minimal security and rigging the transmitter had been simple.

Even after doing so she had been surprised to see Bartowski bring in the damaged computer - potentially full of a treasure trove of government secrets - to a pair of his colleagues early this morning for a second and third opinion. From the same two men that had been hot wiring the store's public address system yesterday. Apparently they came as a bizarre pair. There was no sound but it was obvious from their body language that they thought the computer was a lost cause and they left the dismantled components completely unsecured in a back room.

She had later easily slipped in through the loading dock, snagged the discarded hard drive and dropped it off with the geeks - _nerds_, she involuntarily corrected herself - in the LA field office. She was surprised how quickly they had responded with their findings until they informed her there was nothing to find. The drive had been completely wiped and reformatted. The logical conclusion being that Bartowski had wiped it clean but then why the subterfuge of letting his coworkers examine it? Had they helped him hide the evidence? Had they put on this charade to fool her into thinking an unknown party had absconded with the data?

If Bryce had still been alive she would have suspected that he had beaten her to Bartowski and already retrieved the data. Perhaps he did have another unknown co-conspirator and that person had retrieved it. But, if so, why hadn't Bryce sent the information directly to that person?

Nothing was adding up and anything was possible but a preponderance of evidence was starting to lead her to believe that the man she had suspected of conspiring with Bryce was more likely another victim of Bryce's deceptions. And she was slowly becoming undeniably aware how ridiculous any theory she concocted to continue to implicate Bartowski truly was. But that still didn't answer the fundamental question of where the data had ended up.

"Okay. It's done. I want you in the air in an hour."

"But what if he has an external drive? A backup…" She really wanted to resolve this situation herself. It was the only way she saw to remove this cloud of suspicion that she herself was under. Whatever her former partner had done, if she could fix it, she could get her life back. Even if she wasn't sure what that meant anymore. And she really wanted to understand the connection between her target and Bryce. Other than both being by any definition attractive men they seemed like they could not have been more different.

"Its over, Sarah. The NSA is stepping in. Bryce was CIA, he was our guy. And he burned us. Casey's on his way out. You're being recalled."

"'Cause of Casey? He's a burnout."

An icy fist gripped her heart. NSA? Casey? _John_ Casey?

Casey wasn't an undercover operative like her. He couldn't be anymore, at least not under that name. He was notorious. He used to be clandestine but later became too well known within the agencies for leading highly effective strike teams around the world. He was also rumored to perform the occasional solo incursion but those weren't undercover ops per se. They were strictly infiltration and assassination. With the exception of a whisper and a shadow of some possible involvement in a mess in Costa Gravas he was never seen. If John Casey was coming for you, you were already dead.

This kid really was in deep shit.

Her initial reaction was competitive in nature. She wanted to close this out and remove the stain her former partner had left on the whole situation. Furthermore, she wanted to get the best of Casey. A former teammate had crossed paths with him before and told her what a jerk he was. But she also shuddered to think of Chuck having to deal with such a man. If Chuck was just a pawn in Bryce's game she couldn't think of anyone who would care less that Chuck was caught up in a situation not of his own making than Major John Casey.

Casey was supposed to be out of the game. Retired. Rumor was he had gone off the reservation a while back and taken on some sort of a rogue mission that the State Department and various intelligence agencies were extremely unhappy about. One that had resulted in the deaths of several CIA agents. But he was completely loyal to General Beckman of the NSA and apparently she returned that loyalty. She had shielded Casey from whatever fallout he had created.

Beckman had taken a lot of flak for it but it had been an excellent investment of her political capital although it had not appeared so at the time. Now that she was Director of the NSA, it meant Beckman had a personal attack dog that rivaled the armies of some small nations. Sarah still wanted to straighten this out herself but she also suddenly felt an odd need to make sure Chuck wasn't harmed in the process. Graham's next words on the subject of John Casey only intensified that need.

"He's a killer, Sarah. Cold school. Whatever happened with Bryce, you couldn't have known. You couldn't have stopped."

Casey _was_ a killer. He was her.

And she knew what happened to people who got in _her_ way.

"But I can fix it. If there's a backup, I'll find it. Just give me twelve hours." She decided to ask for forgiveness later rather than permission now and disconnected before Graham could disagree. When he didn't call her back she took it as assent.

Moments later she walked up to the Nerd Herd desk for the second time in two days where Chuck was collapsed on his own folded arms. Whatever misery he currently thought he was feeling paled in comparison to the reality of his situation. Her earlier mix of amusement and frustration she had felt since last night was gone. It was clear to her now that whatever Bryce's motivations had been, Chuck Bartowski was an unwitting victim rather than an accomplice. And a stone cold killer was coming for him. Someone as dangerous as her.

She still needed to find out what had become of the Intersect but she felt her mission change regardless of what she had been ordered to do. She felt herself actually shiver as she made the conscious and extremely uncomfortable decision to trade her sword for a shield - at least for the time being.

She thought to herself that this was her last chance to back away. To turn around, walk out of the store, follow Graham's original orders and let Casey do whatever he had been ordered to do.

Protection details were the worst. She had been loaned out to the Secret Service for a while, ostensibly to conduct threat assessments, and that was the exception. There was always substantial intel, solid threat assessments and plenty of manpower. So much excess manpower that Graham had used the assignment as an opportunity to conveniently position her in various locales where he had need of her other skills. Her Secret Service duties weren't the only scouting she was doing and she always returned a few weeks or months later to put her plans into action.

Most protection details weren't positioned as well for success. They either turned out to be completely unnecessary assignments or you suddenly found yourself completely outmanned and outgunned. Yet the threat assessment always tended toward the average. The result was that when someone warranted the kitchen sink treatment from their enemies you were never entirely prepared. She had always compensated with superior planning and multiple contingencies. Even so, casualties on some of those lesser protection missions were unacceptably high.

And she herself was not necessarily the person you wanted protecting you. She hadn't survived this long due to a willingness to blindly sacrifice herself for anyone. The various protection details she had been involved in were brief because they had evolved from other missions. They generally consisted of protecting bad people turned informant or witness against other bad people. Certainly no one she would lament losing and her best efforts to protect such people might consist of eliminating any assailants but she wasn't taking a bullet for anyone like that.

Her role at the Secret Service was not the typical protective detail. Firstly, without seriously altering her appearance, she would have stood out too much and that would have tipped off the other agents that something was amiss. Graham had emphasized her planning capabilities in the context of thinking like a potential assailant. He hadn't advertised her full capabilities but who better to think like an assassin than an assassin?

So she found herself acting as an advance scout to secure the locations on the itineraries of those being physically protected by other more selflessly heroic agents. She had never been assigned to a detail as high-profile as heads of state or their families and the Secret Service hadn't put her directly in the line of fire protecting any of the politicians or foreign dignitaries assigned to her team.

She did find that she had some sense of duty and admiration for those other agents. She honestly wasn't sure how she herself would react if an American government leader were in danger. She liked to think she would have done the right thing - made the noble sacrifice - but she couldn't be sure. Maybe that's why she hated protection details. So much depended upon planning and the one thing she couldn't plan for was her uncertainty of her own nature.

And even with the best of plans, so many other things can go wrong. It was just so much easier to break things. If she were to learn that she was correct and Chuck was not, in fact, an enemy of the state she wondered how convincing she could be when she told him not to worry. That everything would be alright. That she would protect him. When it was far more likely that this would end very, very badly for one or both of them.

She looked at the unruly hair of the seemingly innocent man with his head buried in his arms. She deliberately stepped forward and felt an odd compulsion to reach out and stroke that mop of hair in some sort of comforting gesture.

But she abruptly stopped her hand halfway to its destination. Comforting people wasn't her strong suit any more than protecting them. She suddenly wished she had someone better suited to assign as his protector. But she was all he was going to get. She felt the earlier chill set into her bones as she made her decision.

She paused one last time after diverting her hand a foot to the left and letting it hover over the bell on the desk, inhaling deeply before she gently rang it with a single, hesitant tap of her index finger.

And she felt an unexpected and unfamiliar sensation - a strangely comforting warmth - erase the chill and overtake _her_ entire body when he blindly reached toward the bell and engulfed her deceptively delicate hand with his own.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Yes, there was a time when 'midnight screening' meant movie theater employees cracked open new releases early and invited their friends to sneak in after hours. Money and/or beer often changed hands. When I tied Bryce to James Bond I had already intended to make Bryce an orphan but thought it was hilarious when I discovered that particular detail of Bond's history in common with my Bryce was revealed in the book 'You Only Live Twice'. And, no. Of course the CIA doesn't have a (disclosed) field office in Los Angeles. The CIA has no license to operate domestically so that would be very wrong of them, very wrong indeed! In related news...these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Song notes: It was unfair to make you search for those three artists/bands because two instances were not blatant references. _Disarm You With_ a Smile by Smashing Pumpkins is the obvious one of the three as the title of Ch 10. The Bon Jovi reference is simply to the names of two characters in Ch 8 (Piece of Cake) - _Livin' On a Prayer_ was the first thing that came to mind when I arbitrarily named one 'Tommy' and then needed a name for his girlfriend. From there, only one name was possible. Ignoring timing, maybe these were their high school jobs? The Ani DiFranco reference actually has no _direct_ reference whatsoever but Ch 7 (This Mortal Coil) has some thematic references to her song _Gravel_ and in my mind at least portions of the song fit Bryce, and what I perceive to be Sarah's somewhat toxic 'relationship' with him, extremely well. It won't be the last time I refer to a song of hers...

Do NOT be alarmed when you see the word count for the next installment! Like this installment it is broken into five chapters for your summertime reading convenience. Be sure to tune in to find out what else Sarah was thinking after Chuck fixed her phone and before he started defusing bombs with computer viruses.


	6. VI: The End of the Beginning

...in which Sarah begins to see Chuck differently than the threat she had anticipated and he challenges her notion of trust...

Canon Timeline Reference: Later parts - El Compadre to end - of 'Intersect' (aka The Pilot, episode 1.01)

Contents: Wait! Don't run away! Yes, crazy long installment here (over 16K words of story) but consisting of another !FIVE! chapters (of completely reasonable sizes between 2,000 and 4,000 words each) so just pretend they were each published separately and manage your own reading accordingly.

A/N: I know it's kinda like that warning on the load screen of video games that says to take a break every 45 minutes that we all laugh at, or only eating one Pringle (see how unnatural it seems to even _say_ 'Pringle')...but seriously, take a break and come back to it if you need to. I just couldn't bear to break up the progression of these events or their framing. See end notes for attribution of a particular quote (that I slightly misquote into its more commonly known form) and my thoughts on that 'framing'.

Serious Chucksters will find that I have relocated THE beach to a more convenient location than the actual filming location for practical reasons (the shooting location actually faces east!) and other reasons to be revealed later.

Thank you all for your continued support! I hope my American friends had a safe and enjoyable Independence Day celebration. And my friends from the UK continue to be good sports about pretending they don't know why we take July 4th off from work. (So cheeky.)

I warned of a brutally slow pace but doubt anyone suspected we would cross the 80K word mark before completing the events of the pilot. I can't promise things will move much faster - or that some episodes won't get a multi-installment treatment (especially in S1) - but I hope the serialized nature with canon as a backbone keeps this story accessible to new readers as the word count becomes more and more daunting. Just doing my part to keep us all occupied until that movie gets made.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: No ownership of or claim to CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, in this installment, no ownership of or claim to _Firefly_ (twice!), _Tangled_, _The Mole_ or the rights to the songs _Shy_ by Ani DiFranco or _Wish You Were Here_ by Incubus (though I do own recordings of both songs, as everyone should) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part VI: The End of the Beginning

* * *

.  
"...Let's not ask what's next or how or why  
I am leaving  
in the morning  
so let's not be shy"  
\- Ani DiFranco, _Shy_

_._

* * *

.

012: Slip of the Tongue

Baño de Mujeres, El Compadre Restaurant, Los Angeles, CA; Thurs Sept 20, 2007, 7:35 pm

_._

_"I like you, Chuck."_

_._

_._

_._

_What the ever loving fuck was that?_

Coupled with her completely lame pick up line about her phone not receiving calls from earlier at the Buy More she didn't know why her brain to mouth filter was malfunctioning so badly. She couldn't just blurt something like that out and expect him to buy it. She was better than that. Good enough not to just blurt out something like that for no apparent reason. She was supposed to be the one in control.

But the way he had smiled after she said it turned everything upside down. It lit up her entire world and she had to excuse herself to regroup.

She stared at herself in the mirror of the two sink, three stall bathroom and groaned inwardly. She wondered what the veteran agent who had taken her under his wing when she was having trouble coping with some of the ugly realities of her profession would say if he could see her now. Had she forgotten everything he ever taught her about being aloof and mysterious?

She mentally retraced her actions that evening in an attempt to figure out where she had gone wrong-footed and found she had to go all the way back to the moment when she opened her door.

He brought her flowers.

He had knocked on her door holding a simple but beautiful bouquet of flowers and sporting that brilliant smile. The same one that had just knocked her on her ass. No one had ever brought her flowers. No one real anyway. She supposed it was a common enough thing for normal people it just took her by surprise. Especially given what she had been discussing with The Director just before opening her door the combination of his unabashedly joyful smile and the thoughtfulness of his offering to her had stunned her a bit.

He had been even more stunned by her beauty - just as she had intended - just as he had been when he first laid eyes on her - and had given her just enough of an appraising look to be considered on the appreciating side of such glances rather than ogling. He smiled that beautiful smile at her and his eyes drifted over her face and up to her hair.

His words failed him as he couldn't seem to locate the words 'up' and 'do' or anything like them, individually or together to describe the French twist she had spent more than a few minutes getting just so. Instead he attempted "Your hair..." before trying a vague gesture of his hands around his own head accompanied by an aborted "I like..." Finally, he closed his eyes, sighed, clearly mentally kicked himself and then suddenly opened then locked his eyes with hers and quietly unleashed the most devastatingly simple and sincere "You're beautiful." she had ever heard.

She had it on good authority from actual experts on such things that it was true and she had heard it many times before but never like that. Never in a way that made her truly believe that it was true. A way that made her _feel_ beautiful.

She had produced that effect on men before but she had always felt some sort of satisfaction with her success at turning them into brain-numb drooling fools. Not this feeling of being...genuinely adored...that made her feel warm all over.

The artful combination of her blush, downward glance and whispered "Thank you" was exactly the right move - even if none of it had been remotely voluntary. "_These_ are beautiful. Give me just a second." she deflected his compliment as she accepted the flowers and retreated back into the room to pilfer a vase from one of the artificial arrangements. She dumped the artificial flowers on the corner of her bed and replaced them with her flowers from Chuck.

She paused a moment to admire them as she positioned the vase on the dresser opposite her bed. She froze feeling his eyes on her and turned only her head to look back over her shoulder. She paused to admire _him_ \- long and lean and casually leaning against the door jamb - somehow making the casualness of it annoyingly adorable instead of aloof or smug as it would surely have been for any other man she had ever known. He hadn't presumed to enter uninvited and was smiling sheepishly having been caught watching her move about her suite.

She smiled back at his unfamiliar innocence as she turned and crossed the room and he stepped back into the hallway to wait for her to close the door. Like their previous interactions he eventually untied his tongue and engaged in somewhat nervous small talk. He asked about her real estate search, how her move was going - basically recalling every detail of their previous interactions.

He made light of their transportation of the evening saying he borrowed it so she wouldn't be too intimidated by his other 'far more manly and impressive vehicle'. Apparently this particular 'Nerd Herder' (as he called the subcompact car bedecked with the Nerd Herd logos) was almost always in his possession for when he was on call. It was a bit on the small side for someone as tall as Chuck - or someone as tall as her - especially as she turned to look at him. "So where are you taking us, Mr. Bartowski?"

"There's a Mexican place a friend recommended...do you...do you like Mexican?" he worriedly glanced over to see her nod in the affirmative and visibly relaxed. "Well there's that and if you don't mind walking a little..." he glanced over again and she smiled and did not object "...there's a few places nearby, I thought we might park over there, walk a bit to grab a bite and walk back over if you still want me to show you around a little? Just...see where the night takes us."

He clearly had something in mind but wasn't putting all his cards on the table, possibly hedging in case dinner didn't go well or more optimistically just wanting to surprise her. It ran counter to her nature, her need to control a situation, but she didn't feel any warning signs coming from him at all. In fact every fibre of her being was telling her that her initial impression of him was correct. It was just this one night and she thought maybe just this once, despite her overwhelming discomfort with the mere idea, it would be OK to let someone - _this_ someone - surprise her.

"Sounds great." she replied. And it did.

It truly did.

.

* * *

.

And it had been going so well.

She was pretty sure Chuck was wrapped around her finger. Or could be if she were so inclined.

And it hadn't been the miserable experience usually associated with such infiltration assignments. In fact, far from it. He was smart but humble. Funny but unassuming. Charming but completely unaware of it. Tall and slim with nice shoulders, completely defying her presumptions of anyone who so proudly referred to himself as a nerd.

And he had remarkable eyes. She originally thought his eyes were a dark, rich brown in the harsh artificial light of the Buy More but in the dim light hovering above the table they couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to be a light amber or a murky green. They were so...warm. And inviting. Yet they occasionally seemed to see right through her. In those small moments she felt a tinge of panic wondering exactly what he saw.

The place was a dive but it was cute in a kitschy way. The margaritas weren't watered down at all - a glorious collision of tequila, triple sec and even more tequila that had every indication of once being only the most casual of acquaintances to a lime. His obvious nervousness had been erased by his first drink and any remaining reservations were erased after his second. Once he allowed himself to relax and get beyond his insecurities he became the most genuinely engaging person she had ever met.

She couldn't afford the same reckless abandon so she effectively stopped after one drink, only nursing her second, mostly nipping at the salted rim of the fishbowl of a glass. So she couldn't blame the tequila - not entirely - when she found herself genuinely laughing when she had been fully prepared to pretend to be amused by his jokes.

She literally couldn't remember the last time anyone or anything had made her laugh out of anything other than contempt. And she was shocked when _he_ laughed at _her_ jokes - or more accurately her acerbic comments. It was the same way he had reacted when she had busted him doing a Batman rap when she first approached him at the Buy More desk.

She knew she wasn't funny in terms of telling jokes or clever turns of phrase - her sense of humor tended toward the deadpan or sarcastic - but he seemed to appreciate it. She absentmindedly wondered, if he found her funny did that mean she was a cannibal and wasn't aware of it?

She saw her mirror-self smile and wanted to smack her.

She was so thrown off by the fact that all of her mental preparations to act like an interested date were completely unnecessary that she had only just now processed the thing that disturbed her most about blurting out that she liked him: That it was completely true.

She liked him. In fact, after just three brief interactions with him she couldn't imagine anyone other than a hardened lifer like her who could meet him and not like him. _So...which group am I in again? Which is it, Walker? Who are you tonight? The agent? Or the woman?_ she thought to herself as she looked her mirror-self in the eyes and thought about her pre-date orders and the fact that she had never allowed herself to be the woman first. Graham had instructed her to kill him if he tried to run. One way around that order would be to make sure he stayed close to her.

_There's no way he's part of this._

The thought was clear and simple but it elicited mixed emotions. Despite the piercing nature of his gaze there was absolutely nothing disingenuous in his soulful eyes. If proven true, it meant they could rule him out as a person of interest and hopefully get Casey to disengage. She could keep him as far away from this life as possible.

As she dropped her gaze to the concrete floor and the crack that started at the sink and ran to the drain in its center, she contemplated that it also meant her time with him would be brief. There was no place for someone like her in the world of someone like him.

She thought back to his utterly corny offer to be her very own baggage handler and, while she hadn't explicitly taken him up on that figurative offer, he had done it just the same. She couldn't yet define it but she felt _lighter_ around him. As though he had taken some burden off her shoulders. They were going to a nearby club after dinner. He had been noncommittal about dancing but she was sure she could talk him into it and she found herself actually, genuinely, _excitedly_ looking forward to it.

She had never intended on seducing him - at least not to that extent - but, for the first time in forever, maybe she would do more than dance. She would like to spend more time with him than just tonight - bask in that smile a little longer - but she doubted that would be an option. And who could say when or if she would ever meet another man as genuine and innocently sweet as Chuck Bartowski?

He didn't strike her as the one night stand type - which was ironically yet another trait tipping the balance in favor of this increasingly-difficult-to-dismiss idea - but that was probably all she was able to offer. She likely couldn't stay in Burbank for long but maybe that was for the best. She would leave a note at the hotel desk mentioning a family emergency of some kind and say she hoped to return one day and maybe, if he could forgive her for leaving so abruptly, see him again. He would remember her fondly as a mysterious stranger instead of the empty shell of a person she never really was. It was a page from the Agency playbook she had never had need of before but she didn't consider it a seduction if she did it for herself.

The one person who remotely knew her would be equal parts shocked and amused that she was considering it. That thought just made the idea even more appealing.

She froze and saw her mirror-self smile hesitantly - one corner of her mouth creeping upward at the increasingly tempting thought and the other corner warily rising to match. Her now brightly smiling reflection stared back at her when she realized where her thoughts had gone. The woman in the mirror looked like an actual person rather than the ghost she usually saw there. Her mirror-self looked...happy?

She had left the table to regroup but was now even more disoriented than before. She tried to compartmentalize and focus on the task at hand. Bryce must have dumped the data thinking he would be able to retrieve it later himself. Or maybe someone else is tailing Chuck to retrieve it. And she too-easily shook off the fact that this was the first time Bryce had even entered her thoughts - and not even when considering whether to take a man she had met yesterday to bed but rather when considering the mission.

She thought it odd that she didn't feel even a twinge of betrayal toward Bryce or the memory of him. Their association had always been a mixed bag - sometimes seeming like a relationship of some kind, sometimes more accurately described as some sort of business arrangement. He took her out to lavish events but mission objectives were always involved and took priority over actually enjoying anything about the evening other than the thrill of victory.

When not part of a mission, it was better for them not to be seen together and they confined themselves to whatever dwelling they were temporarily sharing, occassionally indulging in the physical benefits of their partnership before parting indefinitely for the next mission that could easily be either of their last. Living such a temporary existence didn't result in giving such things the same thought a normal person might.

On other types of missions - those where she weaseled her way into the confidence of overeager men - like she _should_ be doing right now - on those assignments she liked to keep her true self completely detached no matter how non-threatening the mark seemed. Ever since the first time she had agreed to a manipulated dinner invitation from a mark, she had resisted thinking of the event as a 'date' or anything resembling one.

It may have - _should_ have - seemed that way to the men in question with her seemingly keen interest in their conversation over expensive entrées, enthusiastic grinding on the dance floor, their hungry mouths on her lying one or briefly tolerating their wandering hands in the doorway of their bedrooms. But for her they were out-of-body experiences and she pitied the foolish girl who looked like her and the various degradations she forced herself to endure.

But she was quite sure nearly all of those men would agree that it had most certainly _not_ been a date when those 'events' concluded shortly thereafter with a syringe in their neck, succumbing to a drug in their glass or, just as often, a blade under their ribs stealing the air from their screams for help. The few exceptions who actually saw her the next morning as she took her leave with false compliments, empty promises and vague excuses were those she had drugged after enough drinking to believably explain their fuzzy recollections and allow her to remain above suspicion.

Of course there had been more than a few men over her time as an agent with whom she had shared a bed for a fleeting hour or two but always civilians; always completely outside the execution of any assignments. They had only shared a physical attraction and most seemed perfectly content to avoid the trappings of dating and enjoy all of the benefits of casual liaisons. The few who suggested anything resembling the normalcy of 'dating' only managed to shorten their time together.

Add in a disastrous social life prior to joining the CIA and she had resigned herself to the simple fact that despite all appearances of being worldly and sophisticated and certainly not a virgin she had, in fact, never actually been on a date.

So why had that barrier in her mind been lifted? Why did she now find herself considering the remainder of this evening with Chuck to be, in no uncertain terms, a date?

The only explanation she could muster was that she simply wanted it to be one. Her first. And this nervousness she was feeling at that revelation was foreign to her. A delightfully pleasant flutter that didn't rise to the level of anything to be concerned about but something mesmerizing that she wanted to explore.

Regardless, she was running out of time. And wasting it. Casey was coming.

She wasn't sure how much time she would have with the delightful man waiting for her when she left this unconventional hideout and returned to the festive, colorful dining room having mostly resolved what she wanted to do about these overwhelming thoughts and feelings. But she watched her mirror-self's smile grow when she thought for the second time that the best way to protect Chuck would be to keep him close. Very close. All night.

She had noticed the presence of the middle aged woman washing her hands at the basin next to her but only just now noticed that the woman had long since finished drying her hands but had not moved to leave. She realized she had been standing at the sink since the woman had entered the restroom and now looked to see the woman looking back at her in the mirror. The woman's reflection was smiling back at her and it mimicked the movements of the woman herself as they both asked "Are you all right, dear?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm fine." she paused and took a deliberate breath before offering a tight-lipped smile and continuing her faltering reply to the stranger "Fine, thank you. Just...thinking."

The stranger smiled even more broadly at her stammering response and said simply "Do it."

"Pardon me?" Sarah responded without turning to face the woman but rather continuing to gaze at the woman's knowing smile in the mirror.

"My husband and I have been watching you and your date. You two just start dating recently?"

Sarah had of course seen the woman in the dining room. She had just dismissed her and her husband as non-threats just as she had dismissed the ballerina's frantic father at the Buy More yesterday. Sarah felt genuinely embarrassed as she processed the woman's suggestion and the fact that it was _exactly_ what she had been thinking so she just smiled shyly and nodded.

"He looked a little worried, like he was afraid you'd slip out the back. I'd be happy to tell him there's no window in here." she teased before turning serious but with that knowing smile still on her face. "I don't know what misgivings you may have so I may be way off but he adores you. Anyone can see it. And you're in here grinning your head off just thinking about him. Life's too short."

The woman smiled at her once more as she opened the bathroom door gleefully sing-songing a "Good luck." as she left.

It was a ridiculous idea. They barely knew each other. But maybe it was better that way.

She checked her makeup in the mirror and shared a smile with her reflection one last time and left to rejoin her date - almost laughing at the word - with new hopes of where the evening might lead.

_._

* * *

.

Chuck had finished his drink, settled the bill and reread the laminated drink menu a dozen times. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced toward the restrooms only to see a middle aged woman - the one who had gone in long after Sarah - reemerge from the women's restroom.

He picked up the drink menu again and decided that if he could recite all twelve of the colorful drink names on the front page from memory it was probably time to assume she had slipped out at some point. Or at least was trying to decide how to let him down easy and end their evening early. There was remote possibility she just had a spastic colon or something but he doubted it. Whatever the case, he knew for sure he was already too far gone to get out of this unscathed.

He had enjoyed talking with her even though she seemed to be holding back a bit. He couldn't blame her for that, being alone in a new city and out alone with a complete stranger. She was funnier than she thought and had the most expressive eyes he had ever seen. The way she looked at him over the rim of her glass as she sipped her drink would haunt him forever - in the best possible way. And he would do just about anything to hear that laugh again.

He was resigning himself to thanking her for coming, offering to drop her off and making his way home when someone stopped next to his table and a hand lightly landed on his forearm. He looked up to find its owner to be the woman he had just seen leaving the restroom smiling down at him.

"She's just as nervous as you are. Don't make a liar out of me."

She was gone as quickly as she had appeared and he bewilderedly looked back down at the drink menu only to find every entry on it completely foreign to him. He glanced over to the woman whose husband rose to greet her with a chaste kiss. Before they moved to leave the woman winked at Chuck and nodded toward the restrooms.

Chuck turned his attention that direction to see Sarah emerge and meet his now beaming smile with a shy one of her own. Neither could know that they both had the exact same thought at the exact same moment.

_I am so completely screwed._

.

* * *

.

013: Dancing with Death

The Echo, Los Angeles, CA; Thurs Sept 20, 2007, 9:17 pm

.

This is what she does best. An athletic nature she hadn't even discovered until The Agency beat it into her. As a CIA recruit this was among the first things she felt naturally good at. Better than good. After a few months they had to bring in new, more skilled instructors to train her. Now they taught trainees the system she had helped develop. Or a modified version of it. No one could do what she could do.

And poor Chuck. He had no idea what was going on but did seem to appreciate her dancing nonetheless. She didn't want to judge his apparent lack of skill as a dancer. She was, after all, keeping him deliberately off balance and distracted from her other actions on the dance floor. He had to be at least a little more graceful than he currently seemed given the way he nimbly slid down the banister before his nerves set in.

She was surprised on the way over that he had been the one to break the physical barrier first. It had just been a touch on her arm as they had walked over but it had set off that same warmth in her that she had felt at his touch before.

She had reacted to the seeming lack of anything in common between them and let her own insecurities show through when an unanswerable question about her favorite band had suddenly overwhelmed her with anxiety. Especially when he hadn't answered right away - distracted by something on the road below them.

She had recovered well but despite his obvious attraction to her, despite their easy back-and-forth conversation over dinner where he had shared most of the important parts of his life and she had managed to share very little, despite his obvious nervousness and despite her outer calm _she_ was the one that was freaking out.

Ignoring her true purpose at the beginning of the evening, this was the most normal thing she'd ever done. Met a guy in a normal setting rather than in some bar or nightclub, had him ask her out on a proper date rather than immediately testing the intensity of their attraction, actually getting to know him and finding she wanted to know more.

She couldn't pin down when it had stopped feeling like an assignment. Maybe it never had. And when she had asked whether this was his worst date ever - pointing out her own perceived shortcomings - there was a tiny part of her that was desperate for him to reassure her that it wasn't.

He must have seen that tiny part of her when she regained his attention and apologized for what he called 'zoning out'. He reached out and touched her arm reassuringly before regaling her with a story of an ill-fated double-date with his friend Morgan involving a flaming napkin and a botched attempt to extinguish it.

With the barrier broken physical contact became increasingly comfortable. Her arm found itself wrapped around his at one point and his gentle touch had found the small of her back as they entered a club called 'The Echo'. Both had seemed like the most natural thing in the world and she was looking forward to the lowered standard of propriety on the dance floor.

He had stepped away to get drinks and looked back to see her being approached by a very good looking but ridiculously arrogant man in an impossibly tight shirt. She had made it extremely clear that she wasn't interested, finally literally pushing him away, only then seeing Chuck watching the exchange. The heart melting smile Chuck had given her when she smiled and beckoned him to hurry back cemented her plans for the two of them for the remainder of the evening.

Given how sweetly nervous he was when he returned with their drinks she decided she wouldn't leave his side again. And he scored points for being willing to dance with minimal urging despite his clear lack of confidence. Just getting on the floor and making an effort was all that was really required. Even if she had been forced to drag him out there before she had an opportunity to ease him into it.

Until she spotted the men in their oh-so-subtle G-man suits she had actually been having fun and she was sure she could have gotten Chuck to loosen up on the dance floor if they weren't currently under attack. He wasn't aware of the danger they were in and the dance moves she had to employ to distract him were moves that she had intended for another purpose. Chuck wasn't the only one distracted by her actions on the dance floor. Grabbing his backside and tracing her way down his lean and surprisingly taut legs certainly had been distracting - to her rather than her adversaries. Even while fighting multiple opponents her thoughts wandered to plans that would now have to be abandoned.

The NSA grab team would probably never appreciate the fact that both the debilitating neurotoxin she had chosen and points on their anatomy she targeted with her blades were non-lethal although certainly not painless. The one she stabbed in the gut was definitely taking her off his Christmas card list.

All she could think of were the lost opportunities and as she considered what other pleasant surprises Chuck might be concealing that she would never discover, it had taken every ounce of her self-control to restrain herself. The agent had seemed surprised to find a knife buried in his abdomen but she had resisted the urge to rip upward and split him open. He would live. Considering they had ruined what she had been planning for the rest of her evening with Chuck, she thought they all got off easy.

Her anger rose as she spotted another agent who, based entirely upon his bearing had to be Casey, sneering at her from across the room. Having all but eliminated the possibility of Chuck being involved in anything nefarious was it too much to ask that she get to spend an evening - or maybe two or three if she were very lucky - with a sweet, charming, relatively good-looking man? One who smiled at her like she was a person rather than a piece of meat he intended to devour. Who wanted to _know_ her. Who looked at her like he was the lucky one to be in her presence and not just so he could continue to ogle her body. Who seemed to want nothing of her other than the pleasure of being near her. Who surprisingly seemed to consider it a pleasure to be near her even though she found that she had never settled into playing a carefully designed role but rather behaving as her true self seemingly found natural.

She resigned herself to the fact that it _had_ been too much to ask, and more than she had any right to hope for, as the run to the car saw unfamiliar nerves appear - more fear this time rather than excitement - and rapidly increase. Not due to the pursuit itself...that was old hat. But rather due to the fact that she had just used a universal tool on her own key fob to easily open the locked door of his car and started the engine faster than most people usually did it with a proper set of keys.

Where he hadn't really realized what was going on in the club, he was about to become acutely aware of the danger he was in. And what seemed worse to her in this moment, that _she_ wasn't what she had originally seemed. Being a passenger in a tiny economy car testing the limits of its speed in reverse while being rammed nose-to-nose by an armored SUV could do that to a person.

"Tell me when to turn!" she demanded.

He stuttered a bit but assessed the situation and responded with the information she needed "Uh, uh, left in five seconds!"

It was silly but she had to do it. She had noticed him glancing forward and back to his own left before he said it so she was reasonably sure of which left he meant. Despite the fact they were both bodily facing the same direction she asked "Your left or my left?"

"What?!" So much for getting her sense of humor. Though she thought she might give him a pass given their situation and the shear disbelief in his shriek had almost made her laugh. She considered that gleefully reveling in their high speed pursuit would probably make him think she was some kind of crazy person.

But she could see with a glance that there was no opening visible in the passenger side mirror and could count five seconds in her head pretty precisely. And because she really didn't have a choice she trusted his assessment and turned the wheel - hard - as she couldn't resist tweaking him again. "Too late!" Her blind faith in him was rewarded as the tiny car managed not to flip and instead plummeted backward down a steep staircase where the larger NSA vehicles could not follow.

She had just enough time to begin to tell Chuck that they are - that _he_ is - being pursued by the NSA without fully explaining her involvement. He reacted as well as she could have expected just before Casey's Suburban slammed into them on the driver's side - spinning his work car around as the other, larger vehicle plowed aggressively forward. Chuck was somewhat stunned but she was able to quickly determine that it was from the shock of the events themselves and not the impact.

She had to pop their air bags and crawl across him to spur him into action and get them out but Chuck tripped over their wreckage as they started to run. It didn't escape her notice that, despite the danger she had just explained to him and just surviving being rammed by the same vehicle, his first thought was to warn _her_ as he saw the SUV approaching after it had turned around to line them up for another pass. He really was just a wonderful person.

She already knew she was going to miss him.

And then she saw it. Retractable barricades, a button in the guard station labelled "Emergency Blockade", a hefty throwing knife retrieved from a hidden holster and the NSA vehicle barreling straight toward her. Beautiful perfection. All that was left was the strike.

She waited until the last possible moment, until the driver was completely committed, before she threw the knife. It skewered the button to complete the circuit with either the blade of the knife or the electrical contacts of the button as the god of electrical circuitry intended. She crouched down almost as soon as the knife left her hand in case the vehicle flipped - not entirely certain that it would even work. No real confidence that the circuit would be completed. That the barricades would extend and the SUV wouldn't mow her down.

She couldn't help but smile at the almighty _crunch_ the SUV made as it folded its front end around the now extended barricades as she arrogantly thumbed her nose at her most frequent dance partner - her old friend Death - once again, thinking _lets see 'Captain Awesome' do THAT._

Her satisfaction was quickly replaced by an awareness that, compared to Chuck, she _was_ some kind of crazy person. That she had momentarily forgotten her own rules about dealing with nice, normal guys. That she was one more bullet he had dodged tonight. Just another person who would have ended up hurting him.

After having her fun at the NSA's expense, Sarah called for an emergency air evacuation. She grabbed Chuck's arm and pulled him to go meet their ride and spent the elevator ride and subsequent climb to the roof deflecting his frantic questions under the guise of trying to catch her breath. If they can just put some distance between themselves and Casey's team then they can clear all this up and get him as far away as possible from this world threatening to consume him. Get him away from _her_ before she does something foolish and hurts him without really meaning to.

But maybe when the mission is concluded she could even tell him the truth about himself as she sees it. That the fears he has revealed to her both explicitly and unknowingly are unfounded. That he shouldn't be hiding himself away from the world. That he's sweet and charming. Smart and funny. He doesn't have male model looks - or the usually accompanying arrogance that often cancels that out - but he's a pretty good looking guy.

And he has a secret weapon. That smile of his is devastating. Blinding. Brilliant.

It was foolish to think she could have had him for even a short time without causing him pain. He is music and laughter and light. And she is the daughter of the shadows.

Still, before she returns to those shadows and disappears from his life forever, she is determined to see that smile genuinely light up his face.

Just one more time.

.

* * *

.

014: Coffee with Casey - Unexploded Ordnance

Parking Lot, Santa Monica State Beach Park; Fri Sept 21, 2007 4:12 am

.

She had followed Chuck here and had been watching him for the past two hours. His silhouette was barely discernible in the low light - especially through the glare of the parking lot lights that clearly illuminated her if he cared to look - so she checked more closely with the night vision scope in her pocket every five minutes or so.

She found she was very worried about him. Worried about him coping with the reality of the danger he had put himself in earlier, his general state of mind and even the safety of what had apparently been done to him when he had opened Bryce's email.

The implications of what she had learned in the past few hours were horrifying. From a practical security standpoint, uploading all of the government's secrets into a single repository was foolish no matter how well the data could be secured. Using the mind of a single walking, talking individual as that repository was a nightmare.

She had only heard whispers of Project Omaha before - as she had many other projects over the years - but Director Graham had given her the basics when she reported in after Chuck had defused the bomb. The Director had explained that Project Omaha was an experiment in the use of encoded images to temporarily 'upload' a few, specific mission particulars to improve field performance - limit the possibility of overlooking key information while an agent was under duress - but due to numerous problems it had never been implemented in any way.

He had also used a partial truth to preserve his lies by informing her that she, like many other of the CIA's top agents, had been involved in baseline testing for that project and many others. Usually in subtle ways to avoid contaminating the results of the tests, he said. The results would not have been valid if they had been aware of the testing. Apparently both she and Bryce were on a list of rejected candidates for further study. He had scored well on the retention elements and she had scored well on the data association elements. Their combined scores were deemed marginal though each of their lower scores made the risks unacceptable for any further participation.

After being briefed on this testing approach she realized that she had likely been involved in several such tests shortly after she was recruited and a few more thereafter for what she assumed to be related projects. She wondered what all those tests had really been about, how many projects they represented, what they were trying to accomplish and whether any of them had been implemented. Whether the agency had managed to manipulate the minds of any of their subjects in such a way knowing Graham would likely not tell her if they had. But she knew that nothing like what had been done to Chuck had been done to her.

But the Intersect itself was a different animal entirely. It was meant to be a computerized comparison engine looking through multiple, massive databases of intel to establish connections that were not easily discernible. It was never intended for that same human upload process. It was too big. Too much.

Despite that fact, apparently someone had determined that the process of identifying those types of connections was best executed by an organic computer with the ability to make intuitive leaps that a rules-based engine could not - simply put, a human brain.

The only thing that could _do_ the job was the thing that couldn't _handle_ the job.

Yet here they were.

Pairing the Intersect and the principles of Project Omaha was unthinkable. Graham said it was some sort of experiment gone haywire. She read between the lines and realized that deliberately configuring the massive database of the Intersect with Omaha's visual encoding meant they were planning human uploads when every indication was that it simply would not work. She shuddered to think what the side effects might be.

Why the thing that should not work _did_ work for Chuck and how Bryce seemed to know that it would was a mystery. She wasn't the only one shocked that Chuck hadn't been lobotomized by the process. By some miracle Chuck seemed to be showing no ill effects from the upload, yet Graham and Beckman had the nerve to treat Chuck as though he had done something wrong.

She imagined that his thoughts were more centered on what it meant to him personally though she wouldn't be surprised if he had also considered the government's risk assessment of his situation from their point of view. Based on what she had seen on the helipad and afterward in the conference hall he seemed to look at things from all angles.

She wondered if he realized yet that his life was over.

And yet, there on that helipad - with two extremely wired government agents waving guns in his face - when he had first put together the function associating the variables of a Serbian demolitions expert, some blueprints, bomb schematics and General Stanfield's speaking engagement - his first instinct had been to run into a concert hall where he was certain he would find a bomb. A bomb, it turned out, rigged with enough to C4 to possibly level the entire building.

A bomb that he, at the time, had no idea how to diffuse.

She and Casey had both been sent to secure the intel from the Intersect. When she had come to the shocking realization that the man she had been spending an enjoyable evening with was the host for all that intel - for all intents and purposes _was_ the Intersect - she and Casey had tried to do exactly that. Secure the intel. Detain the man. And that same guileless man had managed to evade the two hardened agents. Twice.

Not to escape from them but to run towards a bomb. The second time they tried to stop him they tried to get him out of harms way and get him to let them take care of the bomb. That was _their_ job - so they asked him for the fastest route. She couldn't help but smile at the memory of a frantic Chuck thinking that getting to the bomb _faster_ was just the best idea ever and surprising them by running through a fountain to do so instead of wasting time giving them directions.

It wasn't the first time she had witnessed that kind of apparent courage or even demonstrated it herself; running into a firefight, a building fire, a rescue. But it was the first time she had ever seen someone with absolutely no training do so. Her father would call him a fool. And she wasn't sure she would disagree.

But she reflected on a favorite quote provided by one of her many instructors: _Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear._

She had always had the luxury of working with people trained and conditioned to suppress or ignore their fear - of being one of those people - but Chuck's fear was as transparent as everything else about him. She had never seen someone so afraid as Chuck. Or exercise such clear and rational judgment in the face of such fear. Even if it had first appeared to be frantic desperation.

And for someone to be so afraid and still do what he had done...well...by her own preferred definition she had never seen someone more brave.

"Walker."

She had heard him coming but barely. It wouldn't do for her to let him know she had detected his approach if he was going to bother trying to disguise it. But how could such a big man move so quietly?

Casey handed her a large, unbranded styrofoam cup full of what she assumed was coffee and she looked at him with a raised eyebrow. She hadn't even fully considered whether she could trust Casey yet and had dozens of questions floating around in her mind which, admittedly, included whether she should drink the offered beverage.

But the thought at the front of her mind just now was where do you even get "coffee - just coffee" anymore? He clearly took her hesitancy as distrust.

"Yep, it's poisoned. Or maybe it'll just knock you out for a few hours. Then you can try to track me and the moron down when you wake up." Casey grabbed the cup from her hand, removed the lid, took three large gulps, made a show of slurping the last of it between his tongue and barred teeth, let out an exaggerated "Ahhh" and restored the lid before handing it back. "Our bosses said play nice, this is me playing nice. You don't know me so let me explain this to you once. There are some people I'll drop in their sleep but based on what I've seen tonight you get the most consideration I can offer. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me and you'll be armed."

Sarah only smiled in response - she wasn't fool enough to make the same offer or especially to rely on his adherence to the 'code' he had described at some point in the future - but she made the concession of taking a sip of the coffee. After also removing the lid, of course. Sure it was a nice gesture but not nice enough to turn her stupid. The coffee was strong and black and bitter. But it was hot and it invigorated her slightly.

Casey continued with his awkward attempt to play nice. "Alright, so I'm no happier than you to be stuck with this assignment but we're the only two agents who know what Bartowski is and it needs to stay that way."

Sarah idly thought that they were only just starting to see what Chuck really was as Casey continued.

"Maybe I was a little aggressive earlier. That's obviously not going to work on this guy." Sarah was reasonably certain that 'aggressive' was Casey's default setting and, even though his assessment was a gross understatement, he _had_ cooled down from their earlier misadventures. He had probably gotten a talk from General Beckman similar to the one she had gotten from Director Graham two hours ago when she had begun this impromptu stakeout.

She was determined to let Casey reveal as much as possible before speaking herself. Of all the things she had expected him to say next, this wasn't one of them. "You like him." It wasn't a question.

She absently took another glimpse through the scope in the direction of the man in question without really seeing and muttered "He's different." She wasn't willing to admit anything beyond that and besides, it was the best word she could find to describe him.

"'Course he's different - he's a civilian."

Sarah was slightly taken aback by the career military man referring to Chuck as a civilian. Not because it wasn't true but because, by extension, it indicated that he didn't consider _her_ a civilian. A technical fallacy but she understood what he meant and she must have passed some sort of test in his mind tonight even if it had initially been as an adversary. She appreciated the small concession to her capabilities. She still didn't trust him but it was something to build on.

"No, it's more than that." she mused in response. She was still unable to define for herself, much less express verbally, just what it was about this remarkable young man that made him able to do what he had done tonight. Deliberately evading her and Casey's attempts to protect him and rushing headlong into danger because of an irrational conviction that he held some hidden key to saving a hotel full of people.

Casey gave something only describable as a small grunt in agreement before saying "He ain't weak. And that's not nothing. We're going to have to keep a close eye on him though. He's sharp. Even sharper than I was told when I was briefed on him but don't tell him I said so. Could give us all kinds of trouble."

"Like running into that conference hall tonight?" Sarah handed Casey the scope and crossed her right arm over her chest to the opposite shoulder, letting her left arm hang by her side as Casey took a brief glance at Chuck's position.

He _was_ sharp. And it had seemed like a waste for him to be working at that Buy More. But just like years of questionable actions on countless questionable missions had ultimately led her here - keeping Chuck from being detained before being able to act on what seemed like mad impulses - it wasn't information gleaned from the Intersect that had saved them but rather whatever circumstances that had led to such a kind, brave and intelligent man to flounder in a retail electronics store for years. It was _those_ experiences that ultimately armed him with what he needed to disarm the bomb - a knowledge of a specific computer virus found in a particularly foul piece of Internet porn.

Not the Intersect. Just a remarkable man.

She was a very practical person. She had left belief in fate and destiny behind with other childish fantasies. But it had also been a very long time since anything she had seen had surprised her. Especially in a good way. It was nice to think it was still possible.

While she was contemplating all this, Casey looked through the scope and was impressed with how it cut through the ambient light of the street lamps as he clearly saw their new charge hugging his knees and staring out into the vast blackness of the Pacific.

"Nice. Friggin' CIA gets the best toys." he said in reluctant appreciation of the small device as he handed back the scope and got back to the topic at hand. "I've known people with more balls than brains but he's got both. He just can't seem to use them at the same time."

Sarah agreed with Casey's less flattering expression of her earlier thought about the way Chuck had run into a dangerous situation. Such bravery in someone they were meant to protect would inevitably become a problem. "I guess we'll just have to figure out how to keep him from jumping into situations like that."

"Easy. You be the carrot I'll be the stick. I like being the stick. And I suck at being the carrot."

Her lip curled up slightly but she hid it from Casey behind the rim of her coffee cup. "I don't think he'd be interested in your carrot anyway." She ignored the low growl that emanated from her new, reluctant partner as she finished the sip she had started.

"I'm just sayin', he's not exactly the world's biggest social butterfly. You could still probably run a honey pot on him."

"Don't call it that. It's gross. And I'm not going to do anything like that to him." Sarah despised that juvenile term but knew it was the kind of thing that resonated with Casey like every other male agent. She also wondered if her earlier thoughts were more apparent than she would have liked and Casey was simply offering a way to work around the rules. She doubted it and she certainly wasn't ready to propose an idea like that. Much less propose it to Chuck regardless of whether there was a chance in hell of him believing her motives now.

And if she wasn't going to take such action there was no reason to give Casey any reason to believe her motives were anything other than professional. "Besides, if we were going to do something like that I should have come in completely undercover."

She hoped that Casey bought her very clinical reasoning but doubted it from the way she saw him in her peripheral vision studying her profile while she kept her eyes on Chuck's position. Chuck seemed like a sweet guy and she didn't want to hurt him by making him develop feelings for someone like her only to disappear or otherwise hurt him in the end.

It was one thing if it would have been a fleeting thing and she did it because she wanted to - something she was more than considering scant hours before - something she was now having trouble disregarding as a viable option, tamping it down in a place where she stored the rest of her emotions - but another thing entirely if it was just an attempt to control him. Or if he came to believe it was never anything more than that.

It was simultaneously both professionally gratifying and personally deflating to think he might not be able to tell the difference. And troubling to think how easy it would be to muddle the two motivations herself if she were to consider such a thing. How awful it would be for him to always wonder whether anything between them was real or just her manipulating him.

She continued in an attempt to hide the thoughts behind her words. "Now that he knows what I am, he wouldn't take it at face value. He would question every action. But I don't need orders to be nice to him."

_It comes pretty naturally_ she added in her own mind.

Casey was quiet for an uncomfortably long time and she didn't risk looking him in the eye but if he read any deeper into her explanation or her true thoughts he didn't let on. "I can get behind that. But don't get sucked in too deep. He's our asset. If this goes south, we may have to secure him. Or worse."

"I'll do what I have to do, Casey." She hoped he didn't notice the slight edge that slipped through in her voice. Even she was unsure what she meant by that. _Do what I have to do_ to follow orders or _do what I have to do_ to protect Chuck?

He _was_ different. Different from anyone she had ever met. She knew what 'or worse' meant and she was no longer sure that she could blindly follow orders to harm such a person. Maybe once - maybe just a week ago - but not now.

"Good. If we can't get that intel out of his head, they're going to be asking a lot of him as it is. He doesn't deserve us jerking him around."

Sarah paraphrased something a friend of hers had once said to her what seemed like a lifetime ago. Something she had ingrained in herself since she had heard it and repeated in her head whenever foolish notions crept into her thoughts: "Someone like him doesn't deserve people like us in his life at all."

The other half of her friend's sage advice she kept to herself.

"Hmmpf." Sarah assumed this was some sort of expression of agreement but Casey didn't elaborate as he turned to walk away. "You good here? I've got to start setting up surveillance outside his place before daybreak."

"Yeah, I'll stay and keep an eye on him. Maybe you could grab some pancakes?" she helpfully suggested with a smile.

Casey's expression was unreadable "What? I love pancakes."

"Noted" she said simply and raised the cup in a small salute. "Thanks for the coffee."

Casey just nodded and walked toward the pier where he had parked his car. He got into an older model Crown Victoria and pulled away leaving her to contemplate the sweet, foolishly brave man sitting on the beach in the dead of night lost in his own thoughts.

A man who made her laugh and feel like someone she once could have been.

.

* * *

.

015: Trusting a Liar

Santa Monica State Beach Park; Fri Sept 21, 2007, 6:58 am

.

_"Trust me, Chuck."_

Chuck remained still and gazed silently into the depths of the Pacific while Sarah studied his profile wondering what he thought of her seemingly simple request. She pondered the irrationality of it herself.

Trust her? To do what? To protect him? Less than 24 hours ago she had been ordered to kill him and she knew the tide could turn again just as quickly. It sickened her when she realized that her feeble ploy to mislead Casey had involved pointing her pistol at him. Graham had told her to kill him if he ran. Strictly speaking she should have done just that on the helipad. She now knew that was never going to happen.

Less than a week ago she had wondered whether there was anyone left in the world worth protecting. The world sent her a baby girl and Chuck Bartowski. She wasn't going to let the web of deceit in which she was inextricably caught destroy either one. The baby was hidden and safe. Chuck was going to be in constant danger from enemies and supposed allies.

She wasn't sure what she would do if they came for him again like they had in the club. There she was able to hide behind interdepartmental rivalry and miscommunication. If her own superiors ordered his confinement or termination she still wasn't sure to what lengths she would go but for now she would take one mission at a time.

Her current self-assigned mission was to convince him to let her help him. He was the first genuinely good guy she had ever met - her unicorn - something heard of but never encountered.

She hoped he didn't hate her.

After an eternity he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder and asked the question she had expected in some form but hoped he wouldn't ask. "No offense, but how can I? Aren't you under orders to keep me under control or something?" And then he gave voice to the thing she had hoped would not occur to him.

"How far were you willing to go?"

His question cut a little deeper than she expected and she was surprised to find that it hurt more than a little. Casey was right, why did he have to be so smart? One sleepless night involved in the spy world and he had locked in on the core issue that defined her life as a non-person. You can never trust a single word you are told.

Sarah dug her toes into the sand and looked out across the Pacific. The sun began to warm their backs and reflected off the water. It was a relatively calm morning and the ocean looked like a million diamonds strewn across a blue blanket. Maybe that was why he had come here. It was hard to feel completely hopeless when confronted by such powerful and immense beauty. She couldn't remember the last time she sat and watched the sun rise. Despite everything, in this moment she was happy to share this sunrise with him.

It was easy for her to imagine the water surrounding them on all sides leaving just the two of them together on an island where there was no Intersect. No baggage from either of their pasts. Or at least much, much less baggage. Maybe even an amount she might be willing to let him help her handle. A slate wiped clean where two people could just enjoy looking out over the ocean and the warmth of one other.

She wondered if she was focusing on the same distant point just over the horizon that Chuck had just been fixed upon and whether there were any answers there just out of their sight. She sighed deeply and dropped her gaze as she spoke. Even though he had no reason to believe a word from her mouth, in the spirit of that clean slate they would never have she decided the truth was a good place to start.

"When I first arrived, I thought you were an enemy." She started hesitantly but gained steam once she had begun. "An enemy of mine and of the country. I would have done my job and used almost any of the tools at my disposal to weasel into your confidence and learn your secrets. Casey and his merry band of miscreants showing up forced my hand. But more than that I realized pretty quickly - you're a genuinely good person. I would never use your emotions against you like that. I couldn't live with that."

She once could have. She wondered what had changed. Was it her that had changed or had he changed the rules of the game? She wanted to tell him how rare and special he was but he would only think she was working him. It saddened her to realize that he must be thinking that none of the interest she had shown in him last night - nothing she had felt - was real. Why wouldn't he? It wouldn't be the first time she had done such a thing.

The implications behind the truth hung heavy in the air. She had deliberately qualified it with an 'almost' but if she was willing to use almost any tool at her disposal it wasn't unreasonable to think it wouldn't have been the first time she had done such a thing. He was working things out. Uncomfortable things about the world he found himself a part of now. He might assume certain things but she really didn't want to get into the technicalities of what she would and wouldn't do in a feeble attempt at righteousness. If that particular thought had occurred to him, his response didn't attack that aspect of her character.

"Lucky me." He said as he turned his head and smiled at her over his shoulder. "Thanks for sparing me that awful fate."

It was a genuine smile but not quite the full power version that lightened her heart. Nonetheless it earned him a coy smile in return and Sarah playfully bumped his shoulder with hers. She was relieved that he could still joke with her and maybe even think of her that way despite the fact that their meeting and current situation were shrouded in a cloud of deception and lies. She wondered why she even cared if he could still think of her that way. It wasn't as though anything could ever come of it.

She wondered what he would think if he knew she had entertained the thought of sleeping with him. Strongly considered it. Planned on it even. Not for the mission as he was likely to assume she might be willing to do. But because he did something to her that she simply craved more of.

But circumstances had changed and he would never believe her. For her to ask him to believe that someone like her could feel something real - not be working an agenda against him - be someone he could trust with his heart when she didn't even trust herself not to manipulate him even if she thought it was for his own good - it was simply too much faith to ask of anyone.

But he didn't seem to hate her and that was good enough for now. More than she had dared to hope. She sought solace in that. Even though she would be surprised if he were capable of actually hating anyone. She couldn't think of anything reassuring to say that he would accept at face value so she was relieved when he took control of the conversation.

"Look, Sarah...it's not your fault. I overheard you sticking up for me with that Casey guy. Whatever they ordered you to do, they ended up not doing it because of you. I'm still alive and I'm sitting on a beach looking out over the ocean instead of on a government issued cot staring at a cinderblock wall."

"I'm sure it wouldn't be as dismal as that." she offered though she knew such a thing would destroy him. That was why she had been so vocal in her objections.

Chuck looked back out to sea, shrugged and muttered "A cage is a cage."

She had no argument for that. And they sat in silence for a few more minutes.

"Ever seen _The Mole_?" Sarah cocked an eyebrow and Chuck recoiled slightly realizing how sudden and random his question must have seemed. "I have a point, I swear."

"No, Chuck, I have never seen _The Mole_?" She drew out and emphasized the last two words as though they were as bizarre as they truly seemed to her. Her tone screamed exasperation but her earlier smile had returned to her face as she allowed herself an unguarded moment and rested her chin on her shoulder and gave him her full attention. She was actually curious what relevance Chuck's unconventional mind had found in some near-sighted, burrowing superhero she had never heard of.

Chuck just stared back at her in that moment. Her rapt attention and genuine curiosity made her look almost childlike - innocent and sweet. Resting her chin on her shoulder left her looking up through the tips of her eyelashes - her eyes cast up at him patiently waiting with their impossible shade of blue. A blue that you imagine the waters of an island paradise to be but have never actually seen. A blue that made you realize that every other time in your life you had described something as blue you had simply been mistaken.

The rising sun illuminated the golden halo of her hair...she was impossibly beautiful. And so much...more...hidden beneath her undeniable beauty. He knew in that moment, if she had tried to manipulate him - if she tried now having just told him that she intended to do so - he would have been powerless against her. And this was her not trying. He also knew that everything she had said about how far she would have gone and what she could not live with was absolute truth.

He couldn't help but think that whatever else she was - the avenging angel she had seen in action last night who went toe-to-toe with an armored SUV armed only with a knife and won, the flirty customer who showed an unexpected interest in him, the woman who had pretended to laugh at his jokes over dinner - he was looking at the real Sarah right now and it was likely very rare that the real Sarah could afford to be seen.

And despite everything he thought that maybe some of _that_ Sarah had shone through last night and she hadn't just been humoring him. She had fought for him, physically and verbally. He may never actually figure her out - and he hoped it wasn't just his attraction to her clouding his judgment - but he thought if he had to put his trust in anyone she had more than made up for her early deceptions with her actions later in the night.

He realized he was still staring when she raised her eyebrows even more in anticipation of his story and he correctly took it as an invitation to make his point. A point he had just convinced himself was a risk worth taking. So he dove in, tucking his left leg under him and turning slightly toward her, getting more and more excited about explaining his thought process.

"Right, so..._The Mole_. It was a game show. Sort of. Maybe a reality show. I dunno. It was a thing on TV when I was still in college and I watched the first season of it. Deception was the point. Ten contestants compete for a prize pot they try to build up to a million dollars. They split up into teams and could earn money to build up the prize pot through a series of complicated challenges. But…" and he dramatically held up his index finger and Sarah barely suppressed a laugh at the comically exaggerated gesture. Even now, laughter - something long absent from her life - came so easily with him.

Chuck continued and Sarah gave him her full attention. "…one of the contestants is not a contestant at all but actually a sort of saboteur - the Mole - who tries to keep the prize pot down. The people who run the show obviously know who the Mole is, so every round the real contestants take a quiz on the identity of the Mole - based on who they think it is and what they should have observed about that person if they were right. The contestant who does the worst on the quiz - who was fooled the most or just the least observant - is eliminated. So all of the contestants try to do subtle things to cast suspicion on themselves and make the others score badly thinking the wrong person is the Mole. The Mole actually performs their best in the challenges occasionally to make it less obvious."

So, a situation where no one could be trusted. Sarah was starting to see the point and shifted to face him. She tucked her hair behind her right ear, tucked her right leg under her mirroring his pose and smiled. "OK...I'm starting to see the relevance."

Chuck's eyes followed the hand that touched her hair then moved back to her eyes and he smiled back. It hadn't been her intention but Sarah was pleased to see him follow her movements.

"So anyway..." he continued, his mouth suddenly dry "...when I watched, you find out at the end that two guys - who had never met before - decided from the beginning to team up. They just asked each other if they were the Mole and each said 'No.' It was that simple. Then they devised their equally simple plan. They split onto different teams, didn't associate with each other very much and took turns performing well in challenges, then poorly; casting suspicion on themselves and others at every opportunity. The two of them were never sure who the Mole was, but they tripped everyone else up enough that it didn't matter. When three contestants were left, assuming it was true that it was neither of them, they knew who it was."

He was losing momentum as he realized the silver lining he had found might be slightly tarnished. "Of course, at that point all bets were off and they had to compete head-to-head...but...well, they both survived. Until the end."

He had trailed off at that point and Sarah knew why. She couldn't envision a scenario where the two of them ended up going 'head-to-head' in any way but he had stumbled over an unavoidable truth: everything eventually ends. They both individually contemplated vaguely what 'The End' would mean for each of them for a few moments and her smile faded as she wondered if his thoughts were as dark as hers. Him killed or captured. Tortured. Confined indefinitely by his own government.

Disposed of.

Her killed or captured or tortured while attempting to protect him. And the sensitive secrets he held, of course. Those options didn't bother her. She had long been resigned to the fact that the story of her life would end with some variation of those options. She had seen them all. She had seen worse. On the rare occasions that she gave it any thought she was surprised it hadn't happened already. At least now she had something tangible to fight for during whatever remaining time she had. But ordered to place Chuck in captivity or worse? Things she had done before now seemed like outcomes she had never properly considered.

He saved her from her dark thoughts when he quickly rediscovered some of his earlier enthusiasm for his analogy and he continued. "Obviously, the risk was that one of them could have been lying. And both of them knew that. But they also knew they had a much better chance of winning if they put their faith in just one...other...person." Sarah's smile returned as he slowly emphasized those last few words and she finally realized where he was going with this.

"It would be smarter of me to not trust anyone. Not to trust _you_. But I can't survive like that. Both whatever this...this _game_ is...that we're playing and day-to-day life - I'm just not wired that way. So, I'm going to try to trust you. Knowing exactly what could happen if I'm wrong about you. And maybe...maybe, we'll both survive this thing until the end."

She cast her eyes back to the vast ocean. It's size somehow seemed less overwhelming now. It felt so weird. Had she just entered into a secret pact with her asset? One that he had no real expectation that she would uphold? He had lightened her load again.

After a short while Chuck untangled his long legs and stood. "So now that I've made the decision to trust you..." He reached down to offer her a hand up which she, uncharacteristically, accepted.

"A horrible decision, really." She blinked hard and silently cursed her overly sarcastic nature as he leaned his head past hers to reach behind her. He was awkwardly reaching down to pick up her boots at the same time. When he straightened partially and their eyes met again she was relieved to see that he was still smiling at her. Smiling even more broadly, in fact.

It was the smile that she longed for and she was immensely satisfied that she had coaxed it out if him with a moment of carelessly letting her true self shine through.

That the real her was the person who could be granted the gift of that smile.

He leaned back tugging her up by the arm. It was an awkward move and she expected him to overbalance and tumble or possibly strain a muscle. But as he stood to his impressive full height and partially lifted her off the sand she realized something she had learned about him last night applied physically as well as mentally.

He was much stronger than he looked.

When she stood and he simultaneously pulled she ended up standing very close to him. She could feel the heat radiating off him again and she looked up into his eyes. Eyes that she had noticed last night simply couldn't decide whether they were brown or green, though they seemed darker in the morning light. Eyes that held no hardness of the world in his gaze despite the night's events and seemed to welcome her to continue sinking into them.

In her bare feet standing in sand the height difference was even more pronounced prompting her to look down at her bare feet. She had simply sunk more than he had wearing his flat-soled 'Chucks'. She smiled to herself having just gotten the humor of his chosen footwear - the endearing quirks of this man were endless. He took a small step away from her and she immediately missed the warmth of him.

He handed her boots back to her and offered his arm in an exaggerated fashion. She accepted it and they turned their backs on the infinite ocean and set off across unstable sands toward their cars. "Right. Horrible decisions notwithstanding - now that that's settled I think we should get you home. You have to be exhausted."

"Me? You should get some sleep too."

"Oh, I don't think that will be happening for quite a while. But thanks for the concern."

She insisted on taking him home first of course. The facts that she and Casey had totaled his car last night in their vehicular jousting and that Chuck had taken a bus to the pier made for a very short debate despite his chivalrous intentions; a debate she won with a pointed glare. Upon reaching their destination, he turned back to lean down when he exited the car and asked "When will I see you again?" and they both smiled at the false normalcy of such a question after their 'date'.

"Don't worry. I'll find you." she said with a smile that made him look forward to that event rather than fear it even though she couldn't resist pointing a finger toward herself and dramatically mouthing the word: 'spy'.

He couldn't contain a small laugh and a huge grin at that. "Liar." he playfully accused and her expression must have revealed her confusion. "You said you weren't funny." he teased before turning to walk toward his apartment.

Sarah felt immense satisfaction that she could make him laugh as he turned to walk to his apartment. That feeling was followed by an unfamiliar empathy as she saw his posture visibly slump as the exhaustion of the evening set in by the time he reached the archway to the courtyard. Inside, the makeshift family he had described to her last night was waiting to congratulate him on what had every appearance of an extremely successful first date.

She sat staring after him for a few moments - at the archway that now separated him from her - cursing the way it reminded her of another imaginary barrier that held more significance and power over her than it deserved. Stucco in place of stone.

She was just as confused as him. She had set out to earn his trust. In that way the end of their date was a qualified success. The pressing questions were how well their loosely defined pact would hold up to the light of day - when confronted by the reality of the situations they may have to face - which Sarah opted to take as they came - and how she could keep her focus and keep him safe. Keep him alive. Her primary objective was suddenly very personally important to her.

She had set out to reassure him but as she shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb she grudgingly admitted to herself that everything he had said, beginning with 'it's not your fault', had affected her more than she wanted to admit.

.

* * *

.

016: Message to No One - Day One

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; Fri Sept 21, 2007 8:10 am

.

Sarah set the video recorder on her dresser and began a video log. She generally used it to record evidence that was not collectable at the time for one reason or another. Occasionally she used it to record her thoughts and work out theories when there was too much information dancing around in her brain and no time to document it in a proper report. Right now she just wanted to get the basics of her new assignment documented and get some sleep.

She thought it might help keep her thoughts straight and focused on the mission as she had failed to do during her date with Chuck but she also felt it was necessary to keep things fairly generic in case it was included in any formal reports or somehow fell into the wrong hands. Keeping things generic would become irrelevant if it became the only record of her final mission. But it was simply an easy way to keep a running log of her experiences here in Burbank for however long she was assigned to watch over Chuck.

"Day One: My mission is simple. Find out what he knows, gain his trust and monitor his actions until the agency can decide what to do with him."

Good. Short and sweet. Just a shame that everything in that short message was untrue or only partly true.

The mission was far from simple. She wondered how much scrutiny was being placed on how these pieces all fell together rather than how to deal with the current situation. Given more time to think about it, she did recall that Bryce - while he hadn't referred to Chuck by name - had once mentioned an old friend of his who was 'the nicest person you could ever meet'. She now knew who that was.

The two friends were estranged but she didn't know why; though, having now met both parties, it had to have been something Bryce did. So why did Bryce send the Intersect to Chuck? And how did he know Chuck could handle it?

Then a sickening thought - _did_ he know Chuck could handle it? Bryce had helped her through a difficult time and helped her find some semblance of humanity for brief periods. But they had come to the unvoiced agreement to not overanalyze whatever it was between them and she doubted their feeble parody of a relationship would have survived the real world. That certainty of being right and his callous disregard for the consequences of his actions were the main reasons why.

She thought she had already found out what Chuck knows. Nothing in terms of Bryce. Absolutely everything in terms of the nation's secrets. More than he should in terms of what the two agencies wanted of him and what she herself was thinking.

Gain his trust. He had made a rational case. And he had tried so hard to keep it rational. But she knew she wouldn't be able to make it easy on him. There would always be things she would have to keep from him and she suspected that ran counter to Chuck's definition of trust.

Monitor his actions until the agency can decide what to do with him? This was the tough one. Sarah didn't consider herself a martyr. But still she couldn't in good conscience let anything happen to him. That was partly explained away by her duty to protect the Intersect.

Sarah flopped on the bed and stared at the ceiling and contemplated whether it was even possible to live up to the trust Chuck had said he was trying to put in her.

The agency considered Chuck 'the host' and so her actual assignment currently was to protect him from harm. The problem she foresaw was what to do when protecting Chuck from harm was no longer synonymous with protecting the Intersect. She had to be careful. If she were perceived as motivated by the best interests of the man himself they would reassign her. They wanted someone who did what they were told and could 'control the asset'. The means of control was negotiable but they needed people with unquestioned loyalty in case the decided course of action ever became…distasteful.

Casey was a potential problem. As he had said, they could just drop Chuck in a think tank and treat him like a lab rat. She couldn't yet claim to know Chuck well but from what she had seen she couldn't think of a crueler fate. That's why she had argued against taking him away from his family, friends and home. She didn't trust Casey not to recommend that course of action again just to get out of this protective detail - he didn't understand. And even if she thought Casey would be so inclined she had already made one pact tonight to trust someone. She didn't have the capacity for another one right now. But she was surprised to find that she intended to do everything she could to live up to the one she had made with Chuck.

'It's not your fault' he had said. He somehow understood the nature of her dilemma. He seemed to already understand the way at least some of the pieces moved in the game they were playing. He had called Casey on it and pointed out what should have been obvious to everyone - they needed him. He may still feel like a pawn but he rationally knows that he is the King. Supposedly the proverbial White King; the US government's guy.

And that's where her clever little analogy falls apart. Uncle Sam often decides to kick over the table if the game isn't going his way.

But he didn't blame her for what she had already done and that was something. She hadn't had to defend herself for pretending to be interested in him. But he was too smart - he saw too much - she knew she would have to settle that account eventually. Telling him she wasn't really pretending would only muddy the waters and ring false no matter how true it was. And her opportunity to do anything about it had passed.

'Aren't you under orders to keep me under control? How far were you willing to go?' She couldn't justify the overwhelming sadness she had felt when he had said that. It was so confusing that the one thing she wouldn't do for the job was the thing she had been contemplating doing with him just hours before. But up to that point, it was what people like her did. Manipulate. Confuse. Even titillate. She hoped he understood what she meant when she said she wouldn't use his emotions against him.

She could have played this by the book and controlled her asset. Behave exactly as a real girlfriend would, slow play it but keep him interested, literally force him to develop feelings for her and then use them against him. She had never before in her career worried about splitting hairs like this but such an approach was testing the boundaries of exactly the type of deliberately staged deep cover assignment she had sworn to herself she wouldn't do and had hoped she would never have to do. Thankfully, the sloppy way she and NSA had approached the situation made it nearly impossible to pull off anyway.

Now that she thought about it she hoped he _didn't_ understand.

But this situation was clearly critical to national security, even if it was a mess of the government's own making. Graham sharing operational control with Beckman made even his actions - something she had become reasonably good at predicting - hard to anticipate. He may be inclined to wrest more control of the situation from Beckman and she was a far better tool to do so than Casey. But she was prepared to tell Graham that if she were directed to initiate a relationship with Chuck it was impossible to determine how he would react. That no matter what she does or says he will always wonder whether it is real or just an act to control him.

No. The best way to protect his heart was to stay professional despite this strange way she seemed to be drawn to him. And protecting his heart had become unexpectedly important to her having seen him so broken on that beach.

She really wished she had known men like him existed before she chose this path but still wasn't sure she would have made a different decision at the time. When Graham had come calling, even with all the less-than-subtle arm-twisting involved, she thought she knew the way of the world. Knew what she wanted from it. She thought she knew what would make her happy. Fulfilled. But she was so naïve.

Then her stomach turned as she realized that, given enough time and deliberate planning, what they _could_ have done to him. Send in a so-called "honey pot" that would have approached him almost exactly as she had. It was hard to fathom and she had no way of knowing for certain whether Graham still had such a hard-hearted, soft-looking resource at his disposal. A woman who would have dated him and taken him to bed and made him fall in love with her - in whatever order she and Graham or her support team coldly and clinically decided would be most effective.

Then one day she would come home and say someone from the government had approached her, told her what he was, what they needed from him, that it was the only way they could be together. If he loved her he had to do what they wanted so they could stay together, she would say.

If he ever found out the truth it would kill him.

And if such a woman were ever ordered to, _she_ would kill him.

It wouldn't have been her. She and Graham didn't see eye-to-eye on this but he knew she would never go into a situation where those were the planned mission parameters.

She drew a fine line - she would use her sex appeal as a weapon but not sex itself. She was sure there was some hypothetical situation where circumstances were so dire that she would have to reconsider her position but such questions were purely theoretical.

The practical question was: Who would you send that wasn't in the Intersect? That at least nearly eliminated the possibility entirely which strangely filled her with relief until she began to wonder what the Intersect contained about her.

Unfortunately, she had been in situations where things went farther than she would have liked and what she had ultimately done to resolve those situations wasn't anything to be terribly proud of. And he would learn what was always a possibility for a female agent to ensure she survived when things spiraled out of control and required more personal sacrifice than she had expected. Dire circumstances arose more often than she had once dared to hope. He would likely assume the worst of her but she didn't think her preferred method of dealing with such circumstances cast her in a very favorable light either. Never mind those bloodier missions by design.

At least she had never deliberately gone under as anything remotely resembling a honey pot once she made her deal with Graham. Early in her career she was in no position to make demands but, luckily, had all the training and skills to avoid situations where she would have had no real choice but to accept the worst.

Even if Chuck ever saw the totality of it she was sure she could explain to him how every time she had lied, manipulated and conned her way into the confidence of evil men, their later death or grievous injury spared her from having to play out the cover in the worst ways. He was a good man. Once he would understand. Twice he would question her judgment. As many times as she had followed that script, who knew how he would react.

She hated that she even cared what a good man might think of her but she really hoped that was good enough.

But then she considered the deal she had made years ago. She knew she was one of Graham's favorites - but agents were only favorites of Graham for what they could do for him. Being an exceptional thief wasn't good enough. It turned out they contracted that sort of thing out more often than not. He hadn't liked her request but he had allowed it because of the other thing he could do for her.

He needed someone who didn't mind getting their hands very, very dirty. It wasn't that she didn't mind it - quite the contrary - but she was so very, very good at it. It wasn't any better. It was probably worse but she had quickly reached a point where she could no longer just turn off her repulsion at dangling herself as bait for men she would rather kill. And often did kill.

That still didn't justify the body count. The sheer magnitude of her sins. Her life as the sword arm of a ruthless, uncompromising man. What would Chuck say if he knew that just a few days ago she had killed nineteen men single-handedly in what amounted to a home invasion and a running gun battle? What would he say if he knew the government's full accounting of her actions over the course of her career? What would he say if he knew about the unsanctioned ones she had hunted down like the animals they were for her own reasons?

She already felt totally unworthy of the trust he had put in her to protect him. The very trust she had asked of him. It made her wonder if the baby would have been easier. She scolded herself for allowing her thoughts to wander into that forbidden territory and forced her thoughts back to Chuck. Would he come to see her for what she really was? Would he treat her differently once he inevitably did? Or pretend to understand when he couldn't possibly?

The only man she had ever thought could understand her had never really bothered to. And was also the architect of their current situation.

She sat up and looked at the pictures on her phone – the pictures of her and Bryce in Cabo nearly two years ago - shortly after she had first surrendered to their physical attraction to one another and when they had both been naïve enough to think they could emulate a real relationship. They looked like a typical happy couple - pretty people against a pretty backdrop - but she knew it was more like the shadow of happiness. Proof that the real thing existed somewhere but ultimately non-corporeal and empty. But maybe that was enough. Maybe that was more than she deserved. Maybe that was why she still had the pictures.

Trust was different between her and Bryce. Trust meant sending her to seduce a man into his ambush. Trust meant watching him leave to seduce a mark while she completed her own mission objectives. Trust meant leaving her behind if it meant achieving a mission objective with the confidence that she could get herself out of a jam. Trust meant covering her advance so she could cover his advance. And she was OK with all of that. It was what she expected; what she signed up for. She would have been offended if he suggested any of those things was something she shouldn't do. Insulted. They were all things she would expect of a fellow spy.

And it was infinitely easier than what she had decided tonight. It required no sacrifice beyond what she had already conceded could happen. It didn't require her to become a better person or question her morality. It didn't require her to face the possibility of abject failure. Of losing something she...well, something she didn't want to see lost. She didn't know if it was the cumulative effect of everything she had been through the past five days or the man himself but something in her had changed when she had met Chuck Bartowski and she wasn't sure if she could handle it.

Her partnership with Bryce was simple. Comfortable. Easy. It didn't require this kind of effort. But she wasn't sure if she wished she could go back to what she once was or wished she could be even more different. She wasn't sure which terrified her more.

She picked up the phone again and scrolled back to a picture of Bryce. How could anyone who had the good fortune to call themselves a friend of someone like Chuck Bartowski ever allow themselves to get sucked into this half life?

She laid back against the soft upholstery of the headboard and her whispered thought slipped out of her mouth with a sigh.

"God, Bryce. What have you gotten me into?"

She stood to close the curtains more fully and slid between the cool sheets, only then noticing the artificial flowers she had left on the corner of the bed as her feet slid beneath them. She only had a few hours available to her for some long overdue sleep but before she closed her eyes against the soft glow of daylight penetrating the closed curtains her eyes wandered to the flowers on her dresser.

Before sleep took her, despite the convoluted nature of her new assignment and how completely sideways the evening had gone, she couldn't help but smile at the memory of the man who had given them to her.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Attributions and Pop-Culture Notes (aka 'I Still Don't Have a Blog'):

The often unattributed - and sometimes misattributed (many of you may recognize it from the letter in Princess Mia's father's journal in _The Princess Diaries_) - quote in Chapter 14 is from Ambrose Redmoon, the pseudonym of James Neil Hollingworth. It was actually a moderately difficult attribution to find so I thought it was worthy of additional description.

He was apparently a radical beatnik writer, among many, many other things, and struggled to find an audience or publisher. He has no known published work except for a 1991 article entitled '_No Peaceful Warriors!_' - an indictment of sorts of those who believe they can protest injustice without personal or physical sacrifice - from which this quote originates. I slightly modify it into the more common form I have heard in several places but the full quotation is:

"Cowardice is a serious vice. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave."

Also, I think Ani DiFranco is a lyrical genius. And one hell of a guitarist. I didn't set out to write the bathroom scene in Chapter 12 with _Shy_ as a specific inspiration but happened to have it playing while doing a rough edit and realized it was exactly the right feel and not just because Sarah's a 'righteous babe' thinking in a bathroom (look up the lyrics and DiFranco's record company if you didn't get those last six words). I resisted the temptation to go full-on song fic but there are a lot more lyrics that somewhat apply and even an inconsequential bit that I wove in to the narrative just for kicks. Check it out. I prefer the live version on Disc 1 of _Living in Clip_.

So I was watching an episode of this show called CHUCK and noticed the lead actor's eyes looked particularly green. But then in another scene they were amber and brown in another. (Strangely similar to those of his onscreen sister - though hers appear greener more often.) I also have eyes that have been described as green, brown and even gold (?). I tell you all this to warn that I will be violating a maxim of CHUCK fan fic by not referring to Chuck's eye color as simply 'brown' (chocolate or otherwise). Maybe it's just me but I'm going with 'hazel' and flowery variations thereof.

From last installment... Occasionally you'll hear someone say that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was the first PG-13 movie ever. It wasn't. It wasn't even rated PG-13. The PG-13 rating didn't even exist yet. But Temple of Doom (primarily it but also a few other films) and its ripping of still-beating hearts from the chests of human sacrifices was the REASON that the PG-13 rating was created.

Portions of the associated chapter spawned from that movie, discussions with younger co-workers, Sarah's age when the 'Vicki Vale' Batman movie (PG-13) was released in 1989 and my assertion for purposes of this story that, while she may have a HUGE gap in pop-culture knowledge, she isn't from a different planet and wasn't raised in a cave. But her perspective is still skewed and will be addressed in various ways over time (such as her seven-year-old self's uninformed / misguided dismissal of Wonder Woman probably based on '_Super Friends_' rather than the actual 1987 Vol. 2 reboot...)

Did Chuck and Morgan first see _Batman_ in the theater during its original run? I say yes but Chuck would have been a couple of months from eight years old on opening day. I think Ellie took them but she wasn't 13 yet either. Maybe they pulled my favorite trick from that age of paying for one movie, going to the bathroom or concession counter and 'returning' to a different theater...

Back to this one...It's borderline blasphemous to have Jayne Cobb utter not one but two Mal Reynolds lines. But John Casey is a different story. What actually happened was that the dialogue I wrote in my first draft was so close to these lines from _Firefly_ (one spoken to and one referring to Simon Tam) that I just 'steered into the slide', made them the actual quotes and somehow they survived every iteration since. Let's call it an Easter Egg.

Sometimes I modify the 'blocking' of a scene to fit my narrative a little bit better but it won't exactly match what you see on the screen. I think most people try to find a vase or at least a respectful place to locate them when someone brings them flowers but we don't see that on screen. It's an inconsequential thing, right? Not really deserving of precious screen time...but then if you look carefully when Sarah is reviewing her nearly two-years-old pictures of she and Bryce in Cancun when she thought she knew what happiness was, the flowers are lying close at hand on the corner of the bed. This could just be due to a lack of a vase or few surfaces in her room but I choose to believe this is not insignificant.

Which is why this installment basically begins and ends with flowers...


	7. VII: This Thing of Darkness

...wherein Sarah continues to cope with the ghosts of her past as a short-term assignment turns indefinite and she becomes more familiar with the man she is protecting and those dear to him...

Canon Reference: Early events of 'Helicopter' (episode 1.02)

Contents: I have no idea what happened here. This was supposed to be a quickly dealt with episode in one long but manageable installment. The length of the previous installment was unavoidable but rather than follow it with an even longer one I decided to split the treatment of 'Helicopter' into two installments. This one is a about 11K and three chapters. The first is 2K and the other two are between 4K and 5K each.

A/N: I am blown away by the PMs, follows, favorites and reviews this story - or loose collection of stories - has received thus far. And, I want everyone to know that I appreciate you investing your time although I am behind in my responses as I work on upcoming chapters. I am still trying to update every two weeks and have every intention of doing so but am no longer comfortable promising to do so. I am no less committed to providing those updates, I just want to make sure I am relatively happy with them and will take a little extra time if some parts are not cooperating.

I've had some interesting discussions with some of you about this notion of Sarah being almost two different people. That such a deadly woman shouldn't be so affected by this guy she just met. Which makes me both question my ability to make those concepts coexist and makes me incredibly happy because that's precisely the point! James Bond, Jason Bourne, Nikita - THEY all fell in love (Bond at least once per movie - nyuk, nyuk - but also getting married - for about a minute). At this point Sarah is attracted to this guy and maybe processing how refreshingly different he is than anyone she has ever met but we all know at this stage she wouldn't call it 'love'.

The conflicting emotions she is experiencing are meant to be jarring but not impossible (imagine how she feels). Nonetheless, I am making some efforts to make this apparent disconnect more believable. I suppose it can be difficult to process that one person can be both the deadly assassin I have portrayed in the prologue - to see and do what she has seen and done - AND be capable, or even deserving, of finding love.

And that is exactly what she is afraid of...

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership or claim is asserted or implied to the characters or story of the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ in this or any other part. Additionally, in this part, (and although both are probably public domain) no ownership or claim to William Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ (source of all quotes and installment title) or Dante's _Inferno_ is asserted or implied. (A recent nine2five by MVK prompted me to brush up on the classics.)

.

* * *

Part VII: This Thing of Darkness

* * *

.

017: Sarah's Garden - Lasciate Ogni Speranza**_  
_**

.

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here"

(_The Tempest_, Act I, Scene 2)

.

Nowhere; Outside of Time

.

Here she was again for perhaps the hundredth time though the number of visits has never had any meaning. Once was enough.

She sighed and looked down at her simple white dress of some impossibly light material - empire-waisted and billowing loosely from just below her bust to her ankles - the wind playing with her dress as it did with the loose waves of her long blonde tresses. She was surrounded by an endless field of white asphodel up to her mid thigh just high enough to tickle her finger tips as she walked through it - miraculously avoiding any snags that might delay her from her destination.

It was beautiful. And it was as desolate as a field of flowers could be - unbroken by any other variation in the landscape or horizon. Just pale green and stark white in all directions. A flower for every soul on Earth she imagined.

There was no path but the plants seemed to part for her passing and close up behind her. Once she had discerned the true nature of this place she had been surprised that the vegetation in her wake did not simply wither, blacken and die. But this place did not belong entirely to her. Her small corner of it was a different matter.

She knew it didn't matter which direction she walked or even if she stood stock still, the stone-walled circle of the garden would always appear. And she would be drawn to it whether she walked toward it and passed through its arched gate under her own power or it came to her and engulfed her as the stone arch passed around her.

An early visit found her, in her unrepentant annoyance at being here again, thinking that the arch should be engraved with Dante's "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate". The garden did not appreciate her indignation at being here in this place of her own creation. She would reap what she had sown; if she expected it - so it would be. Ever since then the inscription had been there, carved deeply and roughly into the stone arch she passed beneath. The portal into her own personal hell. _Abandon all hope_... It was inescapable.

She was unaware of stepping through it but an iron gate clanged shut behind her. When she glanced back, startled by the sound, it had transformed into a seamless wall of iron bars with no hinge, latch or lock. She found herself within the large outer circle of a chest-high grey stone wall forty paces across with five-foot iron spikes along the top of the wall - inches apart - sharp edges along their length and curved inward near their wicked, sharpened ends. She had attempted to scale them once only to find herself descending the bars on the opposite side with her hands cut to ribbons. She could still see the asphodel meadow outside but knew there was no way out of this ring of stone.

If she were on the southern point of a compass, mirror image fountains trickled steady streams of cool, clear water melodiously into their basins at the eastern and western points. The only difference between the two was that the water flowed from the mouth of a lion's head on the fountain to the east and that of a prancing, bow-wielding cherub to the west.

A large, gnarled tree of a variety she could not identify stood at the point opposite the gate just outside the stone wall. It's branches mingled with the spikes and overhung a small part of this part of the garden providing the temptation of the only possible escape. Despite the wind, its leaves did not stir. There was a small clearing of manicured grass in a semi-circle in front of this north most point and she knew that if she could reach the tree, or at least the shelter of its canopy as the tree itself was unreachable, she would be safe.

The rest of the garden floor was carpeted in foliage higher than the hem of her dress and scattered with the blooms of flowers. If she dared to look the visages of released souls were reflected in the petals of the many flowers and one-by-one they became aware of her presence.

She knew their number. And their faces. And most of their names. The scores of orange lilies, red poppies and an uncertain, inconsistent number of white daisies - they all surrounded her and called out to her by name. A confused cacophony as very few knew her by the same name.

At least there were fewer daisies this time.

She slid her bare feet step by careful step toward the safety of the grassy clearing farthest from the gate. All the flowers possessed tentacle-like vines thicker than the stems of the flowers and covered in thorns. The vines wove beneath the grass concealing themselves - snakes in the grass, poised to strike as viciously as she had against the earthly versions of the residents of her garden.

These first few steps were always more tranquil than unnerving. Fear served no purpose when you knew exactly what was coming and that you were powerless to avoid it.

She usually caught it out of the corner of her eye creeping up from behind her but this time it appeared directly under the tree when she was looking elsewhere. Twelve black pentagons and twenty yellow hexagons approximating a sphere - well worn from loving use - rolled to the right then left and right again, building enough momentum to roll along the face of the curved wall. It rolled from the shelter of the tree, along the border of the wall to come to rest against the lip of the eastern fountain's basin.

It had come after the inscription had added itself; a reminder that no sin would be forgotten. When it first appeared she had dashed toward it forgetting how foolish that could be. Sure that if she could get to it first all that came after could be avoided but knowing such a rewriting of history was impossible.

This time she watched it come to rest against the lion's basin and closed her eyes when she heard the rustling all around her intensify. The vines were licking at her ankles as a light rain began to fall. The few drops of rain were warm against her skin and she looked down to see that the rain was thick and red and as she looked up to the sky the drops that hit her lips tasted of iron.

Despite her expectation of it, she froze in horror as the vines found purchase on her ankles and wrapped tighter and tighter. Slicing through her skin until they gripped her by her very bones as the rain began to pour. The fountains on either side had changed - the lion became a demon with horns as massive as those of an Ankole bull while the cherub had become a sneering satyr. Both fountains flowed thick and red, gurgling grotesquely as the basins began to overflow.

She fell to her knees expressionless eyes downcast, finding herself unworthy of tears, resigned to her fate. Sweat and red rain now thoroughly soaked her dress and more vines found her wrists, sliced through the thin flesh and pulled her face down to the ground as the red rain fell with greater intensity. Then the vines began to drag her toward the clearing she had been so desperate to reach moments before.

The earth opened up like a giant sinkhole with a gentle slope on the side nearest her through the surface of which more vines appeared eagerly awaiting her. The depths below were filling with the red of the now torrential rain and the streams emanating from the fountains. She scrabbled frantically at the newly disturbed earth, her breathing becoming more panicked unable to slow her steady descent but refusing to scream, and ultimately closed her eyes and sobbed as she gave in to the pulling and tugging and resigned herself to being pulled below the earth to meet her end - bathed in blood and buried alive - eternally suffocating as the earthen walls of her tomb closed in around her.

Here among her dead was where she belonged. All she deserved.

.

* * *

.

Maison 23, Los Angeles, CA; Sat Sept 29, 2007 5:05 am

.

As was her habit the only movement she made upon waking was the opening of her eyelids. The only evidence of her distress a slight, sharp intake of breath. The recurring dream had become disturbingly familiar but still unsettled her every time it forced her to face her full accounting of misdeeds performed in service to her country. She could not attempt to hide the stigma of the lives she had taken behind justifications of the lives she may have saved. Doing wrong to do what was right still left her with the same burden to bear.

She glanced at the clock and went through the nearly automatic mental exercise of reviewing her mission and the role she was currently meant to be playing before rising for her morning exercises and checking for any messages or deliveries. Sarah Walker. Directionless food service worker. Relocated to the west coast just days before and almost immediately dating a delightful young man who worked in the same retail plaza.

A man she had been certain was uninvolved in the events underlying her investigation only to find he was just unaware of his involvement. One for whom she had allowed herself to entertain the idea of a selfish, short-lived tryst and then found to be so much more than just a sweet, funny and atypically handsome computer technician. One she had seen every day since as he injected his wry sense of humor into their daily intelligence reviews seeming to delight in forcing her to stifle a laugh in front of their humorless third wheel.

A man whose mere presence lightened her mood so much that she wished she could see him sooner than their planned lunch meeting; intended to maintain their cover but also allowing her to be a bit more unguarded - even as she guarded him - relieved of this lingering burden of her sleeping consciousness for a half hour or so. One she might allow to carry her baggage for a moment. One whose smile seemed capable of sweeping away the shadows of her nightmares - if only she dared to tell him any of what troubled her. One she hoped never learned of such things.

Because that was the risk of remaining here too long; of letting him in more than she originally planned. Sharing the shadows that hounded her meant sharing what she had done to bring them down upon her and admitting that they each had every right to wish their revenge upon her. She would rather he look at her the way he had upon first meeting her. Especially if the plan she had been briefed on last night was successful and he would soon be freed from the world of deception and death that he had been unknowingly dragged into.

Her plan was still intact if not as enjoyable as she had hoped. She would be gone before he could see through her. He would be a delightful and interesting footnote to her life - a man she had been interested in for a variety of reasons for once rather than a simple and empty physical attraction - man who made her look at the world differently simply because he reminded her that the world was not entirely devoid of good people.

And she would be an interesting footnote to his - the mysterious woman who appeared during the most dangerous time of his life and helped him avoid the fate of those the government fears before vanishing again just as quickly. With any luck, her past would remain a mystery and he would be able to look back upon her as fondly as she was certain to remember him.

She planted her feet on the lush carpet and felt a moment of terror and then relief when absolutely nothing happened. It was a dream she had dreamed countless times and this residual waking fear was something she knew most would call irrational.

She knew better.

The world was full of monsters.

.

* * *

.

018: The End of an Error

.

"O, brave new world that has such people in't!"

(_The Tempest_, Act V, Scene 1)

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; Sat Sept 29, 2007 11:15 am

.

_Weinerlicious_.

Just the word makes her cringe with its juvenile absurdity. The entire theme is absurd. The costume is insulting. And the so-called food is disgusting. Yet here she is endlessly wiping down a counter for the past week and attempting to master the intricacies of her new nemesis - the deep frier - on the off chance that someone deliberately sought out breaded and fried processed meat on a stick.

The previous Friday had brought her to the so-called restaurant on four hours of sleep to report for an interview with an overly self-important manager. She initially thought the CIA had outdone themselves. Thinking they must have started their work overnight, immediately after her and Casey's respective calls with Director Graham and General Beckman, and had the store up and running by the next afternoon. Scooter's presence - in fact, Scooter's existence - highlighted a more frightening truth: this place was real.

There was apparently a market for crap dipped in crap that you can dip in other crap.

She, Chuck, and Casey needed a place to review intel for Chuck's analysis and had been forced to use the Buy More out of convenience. Both Sarah's hotel and the Motel 6 where Casey was staying in the meantime were a little out of the way. They were considering setting up an apartment for Casey - already securing the one across the courtyard from the one Chuck shared with his sister and her boyfriend - and configuring it as a surveillance and communications post. Hopefully it would prove to be completely unnecessary.

The unlikely trio had tried meeting in the media room of the Buy More after hours that first day and the next two but either Morgan, the weaselly Indian man, his perpetually inebriated friend or some combination of the three were always there. They all seemed to hate their jobs yet never seemed to leave.

Fortunately, the same laziness that prevented Chuck and Casey's coworkers - and Sarah smiled at the thought of Casey's new 'peers' now that he worked at the Buy More - from leaving at night also precluded them from arriving early. So they eventually resigned themselves to meeting only once per day, meeting in the media room early in the morning every day for the past week where she and Casey would provide Chuck with a thick folder full of intelligence materials for his scrutiny. Their bosses were definitely trying to squeeze as much as they could from Chuck's mind as quickly as they could.

Chuck was starting to gain some control over the Intersect. Just being able to avoid actually falling to the ground was progress but he was becoming even better than that at managing the abrupt high jacking of his brain that came on involuntarily and unpredictably when he reviewed a photograph or a document. He tried to be thorough and visualize what he had seen in his 'flashes', as he called them, in an attempt to check the non-redacted portion of documents for potential secondary clues with some degree of success. On the fourth day after downloading the Intersect, he started to explore the ability to deliberately initiate secondary flashes on aspects he deemed noteworthy.

It was an inconsistent skill - only occasionally successful - but definitely demonstrated an increasing mastery over the burden Chuck had been saddled with. Casey had briefly left the room when he shared this discovery with Sarah and he had seemed deflated when she harshly snapped at him to keep it to himself. He was so eager to please and expressed the thought that this newfound skill might make him even more important to the government. Sarah realized he was only trying to improve his chances for survival.

While crossing the parking lot later she looked around them, softened noticeably as she leaned in and dared to share her true thoughts on the matter by telling him simply and quietly "Never let them see all of your cards, Chuck."

She didn't think he could literally survive being regarded as _more_ valuable to the US government.

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Nerd Herd Desk, Burbank, CA; Sat Sept 29, 2007 11:22 am

.

Chuck Bartowski was watching the clock as surreptitiously as he was capable of being. He was looking forward to visiting the incredibly intriguing female half of his two-agent team of handlers now that he had fully recovered from the mental strain of reviewing this morning's intel packet - and the earlier verbal reaming from Big Mike over Morgan's misguided attempts at a classic tablecloth trick.

He had flashed on a ring she was wearing the next time he saw her after their conversation on the beach. It was nearly a week ago now that she had been casually shopping in the Buy More after her interview at the Weinerlicious and offering him a coquettish grin. After a flurry of images - only consciously processing one of a hummingbird - he saw surveillance footage of another woman shedding a bulky disguise as she quickly dispatched two men before shooting out the security camera.

He could still picture the blue stone of the ring under the barrel of a pistol and those enigmatic equally blue eyes intensely starring before shooting the camera - perhaps not realizing she was exposed and already recorded with everything happening so quickly. Or entirely out of spite since clearly someone had confiscated the recording - likely her being incredibly thorough - otherwise it could not have been included in the Intersect.

Shortly thereafter Chuck had realized he was somewhat capable of suppressing or stalling flashes that he did not feel were appropriate or worthwhile. He hoped it would help him cut through all of the white noise to ensure he could get through those intel packets each morning. He couldn't live with himself if something bad happened - if people were hurt - because he couldn't finish his task. Whenever he felt like stopping he considered how he would feel if something happened to his sister, Ellie, and someone had been able to prevent it but failed to do so. So he made jokes to hide his discomfort, suppressed the flashes that seemed unimportant and powered on to finish well before the rest of his colleagues arrived for work.

He learned of this ability through a deliberately aborted flash the next time he saw the image he now associated with Sarah. It felt rather like stifling a particularly violent sneeze and unexpectedly getting a nose full of sea water at the same time. He had barely processed seeing the hummingbird when he realized the breadcrumbs had led back to a mission report that included a grainy clip of surveillance footage. He violently aborted the flash upon seeing a brunette woman who was unmistakably 'Sarah'. But he couldn't unsee the woman with a steely glare, a long, curved knife reverse gripped with the edge out in each hand and an unaffected air as she stepped over the five bodies left in her wake.

He was more awestruck than intimidated. Clearly anyone who underestimated this woman was a fool to do so. He had only personally seen her in action that first night - the night of their aborted first date - and he struggled to reconcile the woman who had laughed at his jokes and smiled so sweetly at him with the woman who could clearly kick all kinds of ass. He tried to convince himself that he hadn't seen any blood in either flash or that the men on the floor might have simply been knocked unconscious. Failing to be reassured by that he considered that perhaps they had attacked her or had been about to and whatever she had done, she had no better choices.

He supposed he should be more intimidated by her than he was as he looked over to Home Appliances and made brief eye contact with Casey. Now _he_ was intimidating and Chuck tried to hide that fact with snarky comments. It stood to reason that, if one agency had sent John Casey on this assignment, the other agency involved would send someone just as capable although infinitely more attractive.

Casey he couldn't read. His gruff persona may have been partly bluster but he wasn't inclined to test the theory. But Sarah...Sarah he just somehow knew, as dangerous as she clearly was, would never hurt him. That there was far more to her than that. And those that she had hurt...or possibly - _likely_ \- killed...that every one of them was their own unique story and he felt inclined to assume that she had done the right thing in each of those situations unless proven otherwise.

He couldn't ignore the possibility that the attraction he felt toward her was clouding his objectivity. Since that first date she hadn't tried to manipulate him. She had tried to be kind and understanding and patient despite their odd circumstances. She was trying to take care of him. If she had wanted to manipulate him she could have been much more aggressive about it. The fact that she had not, though a little disappointing on some level, made it increasingly easy for him to uphold his promise to try to trust her despite how deadly she was obviously capable of being.

Their lunch meetings had become the highlight of his day and he was amazed that their conversation flowed so easily or even that he was able to put two coherent words together in her presence. She shared some of what their intel reports might be able to achieve but mostly they sat at the outdoor tables and just people-watched and made up stories about the people wandering the plaza. In the beginning, the first few were simply enemy agents until he protested and she branched out into the depths of her imagination. Aspiring writers, lovers parting, secret dominatrix soccer moms and workers who had fled their professional lives and oppression of their home country for a new start. Con artists and circus performers and secret crushes.

He could ask about anyone around them and she could describe them without sneaking a glance. Even people behind her she would just nod toward the window or the mirror-like surface of the napkin dispensers on each table. She instructed him on always being aware of reflective surfaces and the secrets they sometimes betrayed. She memorized every person who entered a certain radius and - without even pausing to think as soon as Chuck called out a target - she would make up some fanciful tale in ten words or less as though she didn't see the wonder and magic in her own improvised stories.

She just said she had to keep an eye on them all anyway so they may as well make a game of it. He made a game of trying to determine which stories were meant to be absurd and which were serious. Which were from her travels and which were aspirations. A few were approximations of famous literary characters but she only smiled and said 'lots of things' when he asked what she liked to read.

She was without a doubt the most interesting person he had ever known despite knowing absolutely nothing about her.

So, for now, he chose to believe his instincts until she gave him reason to believe otherwise. To believe that there was something much, much more underneath her layers upon layers of armor that even she may have lost touch with.

Sure Sarah was confident and could be somewhat imposing - a combination he found incredibly impressive and attractive - but she definitely had a softer side that was even more intriguing. He was certain he had seen glimpses of it. But by definition a softer side is something to be protected. And having a soft side in a hard world meant she would have to defend herself against that world and rarely show that softer side. That she did show it to him in tiny moments only made him wonder more whether there was much more underneath the spy mask that she was reluctant to show.

He hoped for her sake that one day she would be able to let that woman run free. To embrace that part of herself. To be the sweet, engaging, funny - at least he thought she was funny - woman he had seen small glimpses of. It may be somewhere far from here, once the government has decided what to do with him or found a way to release him but he liked to think of her happy and laughing.

She clearly hadn't had that luxury in a long time.

.

* * *

.

Office of the Director of the NSA, Washington DC; Sat Sept 29, 2007 2:26 pm

.

Director Graham and General Beckman had just spent over an hour discussing the assessments for rebuilding the Intersect and evaluating the human upload capabilities after informing a few key personnel that an accidental upload had been successful on a test subject. Their top researcher had expressed a need to evaluate that person upon being informed the day before and they had just coordinated his dispatch to Los Angeles to conduct formal assessment and evaluation of the subject.

Potential removal of the uploaded data from the man they had disingenuously described as a test subject was discussed almost as an afterthought. The heads of the CIA and NSA were reviewing surveillance footage from a few hours earlier and Director Graham was laying the groundwork for the end of the accidental experiment in Burbank.

"Our most valuable secrets have been sent to an idiot." Graham commented as Chuck Bartowski emulated a bullfighter, wielding the red cloth in front of his friend Morgan as he charged, bent forward with his index fingers forming horns.

"Well, at least they weren't sent to his friend." Beckman observed as Morgan prepared for another charge.

Graham scoffed at the accuracy of her statement but returned the focus to the problem at hand "'Operation Chuck.' I can't believe this. I spoke with Agent Walker yesterday evening. She'll deliver Chuck to the rendezvous tonight."

"Good. Dr. Zarnow's on his way to L.A. now. He is our best. NSA's top scientist."

"Well, I hope he can fix this. But we should probably talk about contingencies..."

"If it fails, we'll continue to leverage him for information until we have a better solution. Despite Mr. Bartowski's..." she glimpsed back at the screen searching for an appropriate adjective "...unconventional behavior, he has produced useful intel."

"Of course, but I'm thinking more about what happens if we succeed. As you said, he already knows quite a lot."

"So, the same secure facility we had in mind? Agent Walker was quite convinced that he would be ineffective in such an environment."

"A position she has become more convinced of over this past week. I think he should be there now but I trust her judgment. Still, the more he knows, the more of a liability he becomes. He may reach a point where, whether he can still access the Intersect or not, he simply knows too much. When we have a functioning Intersect - as you say, a better solution - potentially managed by agents far less...unconventional - I question whether he will be a liability with no value whatsoever."

Beckman paused a moment to process exactly what the Director of the CIA was suggesting "That seems a little extreme, Director."

"Luckily we have two agents in position who deal in 'extreme' solutions."

Finally he had revealed a hint as to Agent Walker's true nature beyond the file Graham had provided. She had been certain that he would not have entrusted this assignment to a lesser agent and the way she had dismantled Casey's team that first night made it clear that Sarah Walker was anything but a lesser agent. Casey had requested permission to quietly look into her and she intended to call him immediately to approve his request. They needed to know what they were dealing with.

"I'll ask Major Casey to assess the situation. Monitor and report only. I imagine you'll want to keep your hands clean?"

"I think a genuine reaction from Agent Walker, as the target's girlfriend, would be most convincing. Don't you?"

"I see." No one could hold a grudge quite like Langston Graham and Diane Beckman knew exactly why he would want to leave John Casey holding the bag on this one if it came to that. For the time being, keeping such 'extreme solutions' within her control suited her just fine. "Don't worry, Langston. Some of us aren't afraid to make the tough calls. I'll inform Casey of our position on the matter. If that's all?"

The most unsettling thing about this entire conversation for Diane Beckman was that her deliberate barb had produced no effect whatsoever. "Just planning ahead Diane. It's best for everyone involved."

As he closed her office door behind him she looked back to the frozen image of the lanky host of the Intersect smiling good-naturedly at his friend behind the back of their wildly gesticulating manager and muttered "Not for _everyone_."

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; Sat Sept 29, 2007 11:27 am

.

Sarah Walker found herself nervously drumming her fingertips on the countertop and watching the clock, willing it to signify Chuck's lunch break before more customers entered or Scooter found some marginally productive task for her and reflecting on the past week watching over Chuck.

He had been deemed an 'Alpha Priority Intelligence Asset'. Something normally reserved for someone who could build a nuclear bomb out of household appliances or similar extreme security risks. Even those assets were usually given license to more or less live their lives with security personnel never far away. But Chuck had the unprecedented burden of knowing every secret of the US government, even if he wasn't entirely aware of everything he knew.

She understood the initial reaction but also knew immediately - even that first night - that even the idea of putting him in secure custody would mentally crush him. She had begun her mission here attempting to erase any perception that the loss of the Intersect had been a result of any failure on her part. She had quickly determined that the failure would be if something so rare she thought it didn't exist - a good man - was destroyed just because of Bryce's actions and agency in-fighting.

So she had cobbled together a defense on the fly that taking such action would compromise their ability to glean intelligence insights like the one that had avoided a crater in downtown LA where a hotel used to be. What she hadn't expected was the idea that she be kept on to watch over him.

She had approached and recruited assets only twice, then handing them off to teams more suited to the task of their ongoing care and feeding. She didn't know if either of them were still above ground and they weren't particularly nice men so she really didn't care. She had been gone in a matter of days and had never spent this much time with anyone she had so clearly misled. And certainly never let anyone burrow this far under her skin.

This one was important to her personally. He was the purest soul she had ever known and if she were part of hurting such a person in any way - or more than was absolutely necessary to protect him from harm - then there would truly be no possible way for her to justify anything she had done in a career that had led her to this point.

Maybe she _was_ the right person for the job?

Chuck had done his part over the past week to bolster his case for maintaining this unusual arrangement. He even seemed pleased to be providing useful information but always left their meetings with intense headaches except for one day when the materials he reviewed had produced few flashes. Yet he kept coming back dutifully for more and she and Casey took copious notes on his findings. She couldn't speak for Casey but Sarah at least appreciated the fact that some of the intelligence he produced would go a long way to enabling operations or even saving the lives of agents in the field.

Even so, Sarah felt horrible at causing him such pain and felt responsible as one of the people who delivered the files that caused his flashes. It was as though he had an open wound that they refused to let heal. He wasn't in agony but he seemed to be almost constantly in some degree of both physical and mental distress. His only objections came in the form of sarcasm when they had pushed him long and hard, even then his wit clear and biting. He always apologized for his outbursts but she couldn't help but think that anyone else would have told them all to go to hell days ago.

Twice Sarah had insisted on taking him for breakfast after rougher sessions while Casey reported their findings. She had also successfully lobbied to give him a break for one day after a particularly debilitating headache the day before followed by a twelve hour shift at the Buy More which elicited an indecipherable grunt and sneer from Casey.

She picked him up at his apartment and took him for breakfast anyway.

This morning had been another rough session but Chuck swore he wasn't hungry and stuck to a simple cup of coffee. So Sarah had walked Chuck back to the Buy More - protectively holding him by the arm but selling it as him escorting her - before reporting for her shift at the Weinerlicious.

Despite the pain Chuck constantly endured he always seemed to find a way to make her laugh during their intel reviews, often highlighting the absurdities of her world. He was ridiculously irreverent and seemed to love irritating Casey which was ridiculously entertaining.

They often sat across from each other quietly at the Pancake Hut or when he visited at the Weinerlicious - which she didn't mind at all because it allowed her to read the emotions that were so evident on his face - and she consciously avoided talking about anything related to their secret activities. She indulged him by playing a silly game that had somehow been created out of her habit of scanning for threats and she knew when he was nearly sufficiently recovered when he began sharing stories of the unbelievable interactions with his coworkers or customers in increasingly animated and entertaining ways.

When she laughed, and he smiled at her - it somehow seemed like she took some of his pain away.

She wasn't cut out for this. She had already spent more time in his company than any other man she had ever felt such an attraction to besides Bryce. But they were both professionals. Both capable of turning such thoughts off and on - reserving them for the brief time they sometimes shared after a successful mission and before parting for the next.

She thought she could turn off her emotions but if Chuck had any such ability he had no such inclination. And the way he looked at her...sometimes she couldn't bear being looked at like that. Like she was something she wasn't at all. No matter what she had initially thought they could have had for a few hours - or a few days at best - the longer she stayed the more he would see her for what she really was. If he ever actually flashed on her he might run from the room or hide behind Casey. And he would be right to do so. The idea of being his handler for much longer was more terrifying than she could have imagined. Sooner or later he would see though her. Luckily, he wouldn't have that chance.

Sarah idly flipped though the dossier one more time. The action was just nervous energy - she had read the file on Dr. Jonas Zarnow cover to cover enough times that she could recite it. One of the original Intersect project team - and the one that had successfully combined it with the encoded image delivery mechanism utilized by Project Omaha. Hopefully he would be able to remove or suppress the Intersect and allow Chuck to return to his previous life.

They hadn't mentioned it to Chuck yet but she had just gotten the text from Casey that Zarnow's visit was a 'go'. She still hadn't decided whether she should start to warm Chuck to the idea and risk upsetting him or simply deliver him to the test site as instructed. If successful, Chuck would no longer be a security risk of the same magnitude but Sarah had plenty of unused leave and intended to hang around Burbank for a week or two just in case mere knowledge of the existence of the Intersect or any classified intel to which he had already been exposed made higher-ups reconsider Chuck's freedom.

She would do so from afar. Continued direct contact would be frowned upon and more importantly she didn't want him thinking she had any power over when she might be called away - possibly ending up with yet more vile entries on her resumé. Or for herself to be tempted to stay once the risk of him discovering her bloody secrets in the blink of an eye was neutralized. She would be the ghost she once was and he would likely never see her again but she would be able to leave without regrets if she knew that he was truly free.

She vaguely considered the fact that business had slightly but steadily picked up over the course of the week as she put the file away when the bell over the door rung heralding a group of young boys who had just entered. Chuck would be coming over to visit for his cover lunch any minute and she hoped that the tonight would be a first step in restoring the life that had been stolen from him.

And maybe - just maybe - if she continued to defy the life expectancy of her profession many years from now she could come back to Burbank and see what Chuck Bartowski thought of her under different circumstances.

She tore herself away from those unproductive and extremely unlikely fantasies and returned to idly wiping down the counter as the gawking boys pretended to contemplate the menu.

.

* * *

.

019: Rise

.

"Now I will believe that there are unicorns..."

(_The Tempest_, Act III, Scene 3)

.

Echo Park; Sun Sept 30, 2007, 4:50 pm

.

"Hi. I'm Sarah."

She repeated it and other variations as she stood on the front stoop trying to calm her breathing. A little over half an hour ago Agent Sarah Walker was nearing her wits end, muttering her side of an imaginary introduction. She had never met an adversary she couldn't outfight or outwit, never encountered a challenge she couldn't overcome. But the woman she needed - _wanted_ \- to impress tonight was a more daunting foe than she had ever faced. And her battle plan had hit an enormous snag.

_That fucking oven..._

As she had pulled a second large ramekin out of the large, infrequently used oven behind the counter of the Weinerlicious, she put her hands on her hips, closed her eyes and tilted her face to the heavens as she sighed deeply in frustration. This one, like the one before, had fallen before reaching the expected height. Scooter's shift had ended at 3 o'clock so she had closed early. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She had wanted a test run to go perfectly and had assumed that it would until the inconsistent kitchen equipment she had been struggling with for days struck again.

She knew she could do this. It had been ages but she used to experiment all the time when her dad was out and she was left to fend for herself. The ones she knew how to cook, she knew how to do well. A few staples and a few more ambitious dishes. A chocolate soufflé with an optional rum glaze was one of the latter.

She had just enough time - and just enough ingredients - to make one more attempt, pack the batter into her last clean ramekin, bake it at Ellie's as she had planned all along and _pray_ that it turned out as light and airy and heavenly as she had expected the first two gloppy disappointments to be.

Armed with a poor excuse for a makeshift cooler and her 'never-failed' recipe that had just failed twice, she found herself still muttering potential greetings as she made the short drive to the Bartowski-Woodcomb-Bartowski residence, each more asinine than the last.

Ridiculously bubbly as she backed out of her parking spot, "Hi, you must be Ellie." thinking _Captain Awesome meet Captain Obvious_.

She dipped her chin to lower her voice in a gruff approximation of Casey's as she left the plaza and merged into traffic, "Greetings citizen, are you a loyal American?"

A sultry temptress with an inexplicably French accent, raising an eyebrow at herself in the rear view mirror as she waited for a light to change, "Hi, your bruzzer, he has a nice ass, no?..."

An air-headed valley girl as she turned onto his street, "Hi, like, where's the booze?"

And finally, with a sigh and in her own voice as she parked the car and rested her forehead briefly against the steering wheel, "Hi. I'm an idiot."

When the door to the apartment actually opened, the simplest of the bunch escaped her lips without her permission...

.

* * *

.

"Hi, I'm Sarah"

The simplicity of those three words belied the irrational nervousness she was feeling about meeting the woman who for all practical purposes was Chuck's only biological family and had apparently taken Chuck in after he had left before graduating Stanford. A story he had not yet shared with her. She was also still processing the fact that her assignment here had just been extended indefinitely and she was getting sucked deeper and deeper into the life of the man she was meant to be protecting.

First of all, she was still trying to reconcile this idea of being someone called Sarah Walker as anything more than an empty skin-suit used to navigate the stodgy official corridors of Washington or Langley. Someone who was both a low-level CIA contract employee disguising her true nature as an unflappable highly-trained field agent protecting a singularly unique man who held the secrets of a nation, and simultaneously, a very nervous, fictional girlfriend to that same young man.

She realized as she fretted over this meeting on the drive over that Chuck himself was the same person in either scenario - a brilliant computer repair technician with an underutilized intellect. A reluctant hero - whether in small ways to his family, friends and colleagues - clearly the de facto leader of his oddball crew at the Buy More - or on a scale with global ramifications - neither was too daunting for him and either seemed to simply come naturally once thrust upon him.

A delightfully quirky, sweet, charming and handsome young man who suffered from well-justified bouts of despondence masked with self-deprecating humor. He wasn't two different people there were just facets that remained hidden from some observers. And he didn't advertise. His humility rounded out the package and deflected any well-deserved accolades.

And he did have a nice ass.

She, on the other hand, had a foot in two vastly different worlds and didn't know which - or how much - of either represented the real her; the hard and the soft. One version was essentially a government fixer - an uncompromising weapon of clandestine warfare - most frequently, little better than an assassin. In a generous moment, perhaps she could be simply described as a government agent and ignore the connotations that only people like her appreciated.

The other was an ordinary food-service worker with no obvious or expressed aspirations. Less than glamorous and she had been insulted - not personally, but on behalf of Chuck - when she realized her cover was meant to mirror Chuck's position at the Buy More. This side of her was a woman fleeing an only partly fictional toxic relationship, trying to find a new start and stumbling upon an uncommon treasure who had fixed her phone and frequently - truly - made her smile. And made such a mundane existence seem a little less mundane.

Maybe she was really someone else entirely - or could be - but based on her current nervousness the balance was tilting by an uncomfortable amount toward the category of 'girlfriend'. And perhaps the reason it seemed so uncomfortable was because it wasn't uncomfortable at all.

After only two 'dates' - one ending in an impromptu mission and the other no more than a science experiment - resulting in an assignment turned indefinite via death by explosive - and several breakfasts and lunches together but just the one dinner - here she was about to have a second dinner with him and to meet the only family her new 'boyfriend' had in the world.

She had been surprised when Chuck had passed along Ellie's invitation but since Dr. Zarnow had been vaporized when his car exploded and it seemed she would be remaining in Burbank as Chuck's cover girlfriend for the foreseeable future it seemed the prudent thing to do.

And despite - or perhaps because of - her nervousness, the importance of that impending meeting seemed like something more significant than maintaining a cover. It was frightening and simultaneously felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Her mind was filled with that thought as she easily and seemingly naturally introduced herself to the woman who had opened the door.

.

* * *

.

"Hi, I'm Sarah."

Chuck had never mentioned how beautiful his sister was. In fact, he hadn't spoken of his sister much since that first date but when he did it was with reverence. He also spoke of her with love and affection, certainly, but there was something admiring and respectful in his tone far beyond the feelings usually associated with siblings.

Which made it even more disarming the way Eleanor Bartowski beamed with excitement upon opening the door and finding the woman she had been led to believe was her brother's new girlfriend standing on her front stoop with a bottle of wine and a paper bag containing her uncooked desert clutched to her chest.

Sarah was as stunned as her hostess appeared to be. The woman who had opened the door was roughly as tall as her - or would be in similar shoes but had chosen more practical footwear - tall and slender like her brother with features both striking and warm. Her long, dark hair hung straight and loose and, in a simple black spaghetti strap top with a muted purple floral print, she made casual look elegant.

That engaging, captivating, genuine smile was apparently a genetic gift and their eyes were similar but Eleanor's tended more toward green. For some reason, Chuck's sister was rendered speechless for a moment simply looking at her before remembering to extend her hospitality and when she did her exuberance spewed forth unchecked as if a dam had burst.

"Oh my God! Sarah? Chuck's Sarah? Sorry, of course you are. It's just so wonderful to meet you. Of course I'm Chuck's sister, Ellie." Sarah balanced her burden in the cradle of her left arm and extended her right hand with her arm stiff all the way to her shoulder and neck. The posture was an involuntary reaction to her nerves but served the purpose of portraying herself as a nervous new girlfriend.

She thought for a moment about Ellie referring to her as Chuck's _anything_ and found the possessive choice of terms, strangely, didn't bother her a bit. Like her brother, Sarah liked her immediately. Also like her brother, Sarah desperately hoped that she would like her.

"Can I help you with that?" Ellie offered and didn't wait for a response as she relieved Sarah of the simple paper bag. It was heavier than it looked - with a bag of ice in the bottom cradling the unbaked soufflé wrapped in cellophane - but Ellie handled it easily. She glimpsed inside and squinted at Sarah with a joyful smile as she playfully asked "What did you do?"

"I hope it's not too forward but I...uhh...I brought dessert." she stuttered before slipping into a rambling explanation. "If I can just pop it in the fridge for now...I don't want to impose but it's soufflé and it's much less dramatic if you don't serve it straight from the oven. I wanted to do something special. Would you mind terribly if I used your oven during dinner?"

Eleanor Faye Bartowski could not have looked more delighted at the suggestion.

.

* * *

.

"Hey, Babe, have you seen my..."

The rumbling baritone of his voice preceded the man as Devon pulled up short and scrutinized the _other_ tall beautiful woman standing in his kitchen sharing a glass of wine before dinner with his girlfriend.

"Devon, this is Sarah. Chuck's new girlfriend." Ellie said meaningfully, raising an eyebrow over the lip of her wine glass as she smiled into it and took a sip.

"Wow..." Devon paused to examine her a bit but Sarah was pleased to see that his eyes didn't wander downward more than the inevitable glimpse out of male reflex. He mostly just looked her in the eye with an expression that rapidly changed from quizzical to elated as he smiled broadly and slowly rumbled "Swing for the fences, Chuckster!"

That earned him a playful elbow in the stomach that he responded to with an exaggerated _oof!_ although Ellie's half-hearted strike had literally bounced off his abdomen. His devilish smile was returned with a good-natured 'don't-encourage-him' smirk of her own from Ellie. "What my filter-less boyfriend means to say is that you're very beautiful. Weren't you looking for something, Devon?"

"Oh, yeah. Thanks, Babe." Devon quickly got the point - one that Sarah easily identified as likely being a prearranged one as he had just literally thanked Ellie for nothing - that Ellie wanted to interrogate Sarah unaccompanied and uninterrupted. "Didn't know little bro had it in him. But she's not the only incredibly beautiful woman here."

As he said this last part, he had locked eyes with Ellie as he leaned in, snaked an arm around her waist to pull her close briefly and possessively only to kiss her lightly and sweetly on the crown of her head. Ellie smiled that electric Bartowski smile as she playfully pushed him away promoting Devon to release her as he moved toward the hallway and backpedaled toward their bedroom. "I'll go take care of...that...and leave you two ladies to it then. Very nice to meet you, Sarah."

"And you, Devon. And thank you." Sarah smiled as Devon gave Ellie a poorly concealed thumbs up and she threw a dish towel at him. Observing them together for less than a minute, Sarah now knew two things for certain about the man known by some as Captain Awesome: he was a horrible liar and he utterly adored Ellie.

"So..." Ellie continued with a broad smile "...that's Devon."

"Chuck said everyone calls him Captain Awesome?"

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Or just _Awesome_. Please don't be like _everyone_. It's a holdover from college. Chuck thinks its hilarious."

"He probably thinks that because you don't." Sarah smiled and Ellie smiled back at that, appreciating Sarah's awareness of Chuck's teasing nature and decided to tease back.

"So why is it that _Morgan_..." Ellie dragged out the name with disdain even as she smiled at her "...got to meet you before I did?"

"Oh, that wasn't Chuck's fault. It's just that we met at the Buy More and Morgan was right there." Ellie was pleased that Sarah was both defending Chuck and that something good had finally come from Chuck's self-imposed exile from the larger world to the confines of the electronics superstore.

Sarah went on to provide Ellie a sanitized description of their meeting and first date, with an _aww_ at the story of the ballerina and her father, tutting in disapproval at Chuck's failure to call Sarah, and beaming at Sarah coming back to the Buy More, dragging him out dancing after dinner and the two of them sitting on the beach talking until dawn. Sarah was surprised in the retelling that all the bits she could share - even in their sanitized forms - were fond memories despite the context she knew she had withheld.

"Do you really not like Morgan?" Sarah asked, recalling how Ellie had asked the original question and suddenly realizing just how much she had shared. There was something about Ellie - a trait she shared with her brother - that practically compelled you to confide in her.

Ellie sighed and combed the fingers of her right hand through her hair before answering. "Morgan's just a little...intense? He's easier to deal with when Chuck's around and they go off on their arcane pop-culture discussions. I had to send him hunting for a specific brand of dinner rolls because he was driving me crazy in the kitchen. Speaking of..."

Ellie glanced at the oven and Sarah followed her gaze to see the timer with only 20 seconds remaining. Ellie set her wine glass down next to a large bowl of tossed salad on the pass through and stepped over to the oven. Sarah now realized that Ellie had kept an eye on the stove the whole time. When Ellie opened the oven door the heavenly aroma of fresh-baked bread filled the small space that took her back to pleasant memories of her own youth.

Ellie extracted a tray of absolutely perfect dinner rolls and winked at her as she closed the oven door by deftly passing it from her foot to her hip. "It's set at 350. What do you need for your soufflé? Everyone should be here in a few minutes and we'll have served dinner by the time it's ready for your big reveal."

"I like to start at 400." Ellie bumped up the temperature and started separating rolls and dropping them into a bowl lined with a towel before returning to her glass of wine and her previous pose.

"OK, so it was a mean trick but I guess I _tolerate_ Morgan. He adores Chuck, always has. Chuck and I have been the only family that either of us has for a long time but Morgan has always been there for him. You said he was _right there_ and - for better or worse - except for when Chuck was away at college - he always is. Always. He'd jump in front of a train for Chuck. I'll tolerate a lot for someone like that. He can just be a little...trying. He's also had a crush on me for as long as he's known Chuck. I think he keeps waiting for me and Devon to break up again."

"Again? I thought you two had been together since med school?"

"Not quite." Ellie took a sip of her wine as she contemplated how much to share. Sarah had given up a lot of information about her and Chuck with minimal prompting so she took a breath and dove in. "We've known each other for about seven years now. We _met_ in med school. First day. He was just so handsome and sweet and god, his voice. Had a wild fling for a while but I wasn't ready for anything serious. I...I had a lot going on up until then and just wanted to focus on me for a while, you know?" Sarah nodded in understanding. She certainly hadn't been inclined to put any relationships first in her own life.

"We may have hooked up a few times during med school but we ended up doing our general residencies in the same hospital and just kept bumping into each other. We started dating again - more seriously this time - but there was just a lot going on...for both of us. I just thought I was too much of a mess and reacted badly to some things. Chuck thought it was his fault for a while. He takes too much onto himself. Always has. But it wasn't. It really wasn't, he just didn't know what was really going on." and Ellie reached out to touch Sarah's forearm reassuringly to emphasize the point. "Devon and Chuck get along great and always did...it was just a mess. Chuck kinda took care of me for a while. Said it was his turn. He's...I know I'm his sister and I'm supposed to say so but Chuck is just a wonderful person."

Ellie took another sip of her wine before continuing "But around Christmas that year, Devon comes back practically begging - saying he missed me and wanted another chance - thought we were worth another chance - and just kept at it. Doing a lot of sweet things but not being obnoxious about it."

"Like what?" Sarah prompted. She had expected Ellie to make a case for Chuck but even though she agreed whole-heartedly that Chuck was a wonderful person she was curious to hear the rest of Ellie's story.

"Like bringing me lunch on his off days from this place that he knew I liked but was too far to get there and back during my break. Just little things. After a couple of months, I finally decided to give us one more chance. I missed him too and wanted to at least be able to say we gave it a real shot. I had just been worried about it falling apart again. I didn't think I could bear that. That was over two years ago and I think we're going to make it this time. I really do. I don't think I'm scared anymore. Don't tell him I said so..." for some reason she had gotten a little misty and but no tears actually threatened as she leaned in slightly, smiled and lowered her voice to whisper conspiratorially "...but he _is_ pretty awesome."

Sarah had expected to hear a perfect little sickening lovey dovey story. She was surprised that she was more impressed by how real Ellie was. No pretenses whatsoever.

She also loved her brother. It defined her more than she would expect of sibling love and it made her wonder what she meant about taking care of each other. She suspected it had to do with her and Devon's breakup. The Bartowski siblings struck her as people who fell hard and deeply in love and could easily be devastated by a failed relationship - something that had been part of her initial briefing on Chuck.

A lot that hadn't been spoken must have gone on to make Ellie dump a man known as Captain Awesome twice. Especially since it was clear from Ellie's body language and tone during her story that she had always loved him. And she couldn't ever picture Ellie as any sort of mess. But even if she had been at one time and she was now this perfect career woman, girlfriend and sister it meant such a thing was possible. Whatever had happened, she had worked it out. Figured out who she was. You just had to be as smart and determined as Eleanor Bartowski. A tall order to be sure.

"Anyway..." Ellie dramatically said before continuing "...that's all pretty much common knowledge around here and now at least you're not at a disadvantage. But I thought I was supposed to be grilling you or at least revealing all of Chuck's embarrassing stories not my life history." Just then the oven dinged to indicate it was ready and Ellie observed "Everyone should be here any minute. Chuck's pretty reliable about that kind of thing. Wanna pop your soufflé in?"

Sarah retrieved her soufflé from the refrigerator, said a silent prayer, slid it into the oven, set the timer and dropped the temperature by 25 degrees. "Gives the crust a little extra puff so it has something to climb as it bakes." she explained.

As if Sarah didn't feel enough pressure, Ellie offered "I'm so jealous. I never could get a soufflé to come out right."

"Well, it's all in the whisk." And Sarah was surprised and relieved that she had enough knowledge of how to properly hand beat egg whites until they were stiff enough to support the weight of an uncooked egg and various tips like using room temperature, slightly old eggs and how to know when you were over-beating them to interest Ellie. This way she could avoid the promised 'grilling' Ellie had indicated was coming. Ellie revealed that she had always used a mixer to beat her egg whites the few times she had tried a soufflé and while they had turned out OK, they weren't quite what she had been expecting.

Sarah was sure that Ellie was being more than a little modest and that they had been more than OK. Ellie shooed her out of the kitchen when she realized everything was going to be done at about the same time - which Sarah noticed first and praised as something she could never get right and Ellie beamed at the praise saying "You are welcome to any and all of my secrets" something Agent Walker could honestly say no one had ever offered freely. Ellie told her to take her wine and have a seat since she was a guest.

Still she grabbed the salad on her way and then came back for the rolls before doing so. She was glad she hadn't really had to lie too much to Ellie. Like Chuck, she was surprised how much she really wanted the other young woman to like her and had also been surprised how normal and easy their kitchen conversation had been.

Sarah had a strange, fleeting thought that she had just met the woman she wished she could be.

She heard Devon talking to someone in the hallway as she tried to relax at the table; silently cheering for her dessert to rise properly and not fall. All her earlier expert tips would be somewhat diminished if the end result wasn't any better than OK. If nothing else goes right at least she can still impress Ellie. So no matter what was going on with Chuck and Casey at least one thing would go right tonight.

Morgan rounded the corner with a package of pre-made rolls "Special delivery. Through the _Mor-gan door_" he singsonged. "...oh hey Sarah. I...Ellie, what are these?" Sarah had raised her hand in greeting as Morgan was distracted by the fresh baked bread on the table.

"_Those_ are for everyone for dinner. The ones in your grubby paw are so I can send you home with enough pot roast sliders to last three days. Just share with your mom and tell her 'Hi' from us."

Sarah smiled at the lengths Ellie had gone to in order to spend a few moments alone with her and found herself hoping she had liked her even as Morgan's eyes glazed over a bit and he muttered to Ellie "You...are a goddess." She could see why Ellie needed a short break from the talkative, enthusiastic bearded man but she had also planned a special treat for him despite her feigned disdain. Sarah silently thanked Ellie for the intel that Morgan was someone who had to be actively managed.

She could also see how close this group was and that they had rallied together in difficult times before. That morning on the beach she had told Chuck to tell them nothing to keep them safe. She could see now how difficult that would be for him. She had effectively cut off his support system as he struggled with his new reality and the realization that no end was in sight. Her first priority was to keep him safe. As much as she might feel something more under different circumstances, such thoughts were secondary to his safety. And she was a poor replacement for these people who loved and supported him.

She had come here tonight hoping to keep up appearances. Instead she had met the most delightful, clever and good-hearted woman she could have ever hoped to know. A woman she would have liked to call a friend. Knowing how it would destroy her brother if anything happened to her, and just knowing the woman herself, a woman she wanted to keep safe as much as her brother.

Ellie, Devon and Morgan. She knew her mission priorities but the circle of her protection had grown. She couldn't - and likely wouldn't need to - take actions as direct as those that might be required to protect Chuck and still preserve Chuck's secret. She doubted whether she fully grasped Chuck's burden but was now starting to understand the difficulty of what she had asked of him. She too was now left with one primary means of keeping the other people in this apartment safe. She would tell them nothing.

The oven timer dinged and Ellie immediately called out that she could get it if Sarah didn't mind.

Sarah checked the time and realized that Ellie's ever-punctual brother should have been home by now. She had a flurry of contradictory thoughts about calling to validate his whereabouts, letting Ellie do it so it didn't seem like she was acting purely as his handler, whether she was striking an appropriate balance between concern for her asset versus a girlfriend's concern about dinner going well and whether she had time to whip up that rum glaze. Somehow she managed to answer Ellie's question with what sounded like a very casual "Sure. Thanks." even as Morgan asked in a whisper "Ellie let you make dessert?" with a disbelieving expression of awe.

Sarah just nodded with a small smile but sat in horrified anticipation, fighting not to bite at her nails for the few seconds that seemed like minutes before the verdict was rendered. Still hoping to make a good impression for reasons she could no longer distinctly separate.

Under different circumstances maybe they could have been friends. She would have liked to be her friend.

Only now did she realize that she may have encroached on the other woman's domain more than Ellie had let on. Ellie didn't seem to feel that way and Sarah couldn't help but be delighted with what she heard next.

"Oh, wow Sarah...It's perfect."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: In researching for this part I discovered that soufflé is a tricky little beast but not in the cartoonish way that I knew of and there is only one way it could have been served properly in the episode in question.

(Also the Nolan Batman movies - particularly _The Dark Knight Rises_ \- have been on HBO almost constantly and I've been reading a lot of _Castle_ fan fic set around the beginning of its S4 - first episode of S4 was named 'Rise' - and thought pompously titling a chapter 'Rise' only to have it center around a delicious pastry dessert was - in the words of Jayne Cobb - 'HIGH-larious'...just me?...alrighty then...)

That combined with the realization that the first meeting between Ellie and Sarah occurred offscreen led to that entire scene. Is it likely that Ellie spilled all this to Sarah upon first meeting her? I think it's possible in her excitement for Chuck that she overshares a little. But I want to tell a little of Ellie's story too and this is part of it.

From the broader Chuck timeline, a flashback in 'Angel de la Meurte' tells us that Ellie's first day of medical school was seven years ago - in late August or early September 2000 - when Chuck was entering his second year at Stanford - and we all know what happened on her first day. Yet in 'Seduction' Devon mentions to Morgan that he and Ellie have been dating for three years at that point (actually, that he's been in love with her for three years). Certainly not seven years. And really who could date Ellie Bartowski and wait seven years to propose? Not awesome. And umm...not Awesome. But that is another tale for another time...


	8. VIII: Easier Said Than Done

...wherein Sarah considers her true nature, her worthiness of the trust of others and how best to protect a man who doesn't seem to realize how special he is...

Canon Reference: Later events of 'Helicopter' (episode 1.02)

Contents: This is the shortest installment to date but really the second part of the previous installment. Under 10K in total length consisting of one short chapter (Ch 20) and one long one (Ch 21); the long one divided into three sections. Maybe one day I'll write chapters of consistent lengths...

A/N: I hate editing 'on site'. I usually do it offline, upload and then fix any lost formatting but this time dared to use the site. Of course, after a marathon session, it logged me out when I tried to save. Grrr. Congrats and thanks to resaw for pointing out a typo - 'deliberate barn' indeed! I blamed autocorrect for that one (the answer was 'barb') and should any mistakes get through this time I'll blame general frustration for that save debacle. (Strangely a deliberate barn WILL appear in the next installment.) :)

I threw in a mixed bag of classical references last time. The quotes from _The Tempest_ all reflect upon the natures of people. One can be interpreted as an expression of either wonder or disdain and I used it for both. Some general inspiration for Sarah's nightmare slipped in from Greek mythology and Dante's _Inferno_ but the deliberate reference was the inscription over the gate. It is the last of nine lines of the inscription Dante describes over the gates of hell. My preferred translation is 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'. I envision it carved in runic style letters, about eight inches high. Or maybe Comic Sans.

As I flirt with official novel-length territory (only having covered two episodes, ZOINKS!) I want to reiterate how much I appreciate your choice to invest your time. Special thanks to reviewers and PM-ers who question and tug at loose treads while being so supportive. I appreciate your trust in dealing with some of the frustrations of canon (even knowing there are places where even my best intentions may strain that trust) and value your feedback.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has derived no income or other profit from this work. No ownership or claim is asserted or implied to the characters or story of the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ in this or any other part. Additionally, in this part, no ownership or claim to the board game _Clue_ (known as _Cluedo_ everywhere but America), any former mayors of Ottawa, _The Usual Suspects_ or Shakespeare's _The_ _Tempest_ (just to close out that title from the last installment) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part VIII - Easier Said Than Done

* * *

.

020: Something Worth Saving

.

Port of Los Angeles; Sun Sept 30, 2007 10:55 pm

.

Despite the facts that her wrists were in handcuffs, her feet bound with duct tape and she was waiting to be delivered to a group of North Korean torture specialists, Sarah was smiling beneath still more duct tape over her mouth. She was thinking about her earlier fight with Casey.

She had wondered since their first encounter how she would fare if she went toe-to-toe with the notorious bad ass and now she knew she could more than hold her own. In fact, she was relatively certain she had him beat. They were pretty evenly matched with her lesser strength offset by superior speed; the opposite was true for Casey. He hit like a sledgehammer and was fast enough that she couldn't evade every attack entirely.

Her usual style when fighting a much larger opponent was much like a mongoose, dodge and counter strike. But with Casey she had to roll to minimize the impact of the blows that inevitably found their targets. She seemed to have gained the upper hand through creative use of her 'home turf' - and smiled more broadly at the recollection of his look of surprise when her thrown corn dog skewers actually penetrated the flimsy fast food tray he had used as a shield - just before they were interrupted by her band of teenage admirers and he retreated. Solely as a matter of professional pride she wondered if she could have finished the job.

Then her smile faded when she began to question why the fight had been necessary in the first place. She and Casey were the only two who knew Dr. Zarnow was coming so it seemed as simple as a game of _Clue_ with most of the cards missing. Yet each assumed the obvious - that the other was responsible.

She should have taken the lesson from Chuck's game show analogy regarding trust to heart. It was really a simplified version of basic game theory - The Prisoner's Dilemma - mutually improving your odds of success via cooperation by ignoring your odds of being betrayed. It was something Chuck seemed to understand intuitively but something two experienced agents such as Casey and herself - although aware of the concept - had too hard a time overriding the distrust ingrained in them to utilize to their advantage.

If she and Casey had just trusted each other then the realization she had come to during Ellie's dinner party would have been obvious to both of them. Assuming neither of them had killed the doctor and no one else knew he was coming then the logical conclusion was that the doctor himself was responsible for his own disappearance.

She could have shared this epiphany with Chuck and Casey but she was just _so_ incredibly angry at both of them. At Chuck for _choosing_ not to trust her and Casey for revealing something about her to Chuck that she would prefer he never knew. She had allowed herself to be caught off guard. She made the tactical mistake of looking back at Chuck as she walked through the archway instead of checking her blind spot - whether she looked back to glare at him for his mistrust or to see if he was following after her she wasn't sure - and paid for it with a dart in the shoulder.

She couldn't believe that Casey had brought up her mission as Elena Truffaut. It was dirty pool. Casey had done worse on a mission. Or at least 'as bad'. The difference was that Chuck already thought of Casey as a dangerous person. But Casey knew that when Chuck looked at her he didn't process her the same way. Or he hadn't before. Not until Casey had added a threat to Chuck's friends and family to the mix.

A threat to Ellie.

Sarah was sure there were few things that qualified as an unforgivable sin to Chuck but threatening or harming Ellie would undoubtedly be at the top of the list. She had known the woman for a couple of hours and already considered such an offense to be unforgivable herself.

In an anger brought on by defensiveness - at the idea that she could harm him after sticking her neck out to keep him out of a secure facility or harming the wonderful woman she had been so excited and terrified to meet tonight or any other member of his makeshift family - and maybe exacerbated even more by what Ellie had described as the murder of the soufflé she had fretted over most of the afternoon - she had simply slipped up. Everything she had told him about that mission was true.

They weren't diplomats, they _were_ assassins. And they _had_ been after her after she had caused some serious problems with an arms deal meant to supply terrorists planning a coordinated attack targeting multiple embassies in Europe. Independently hired to eliminate Elena Truffaut, they had gathered to discuss her sanction once they got wind of each others' involvement in some bizarre attempt at feigned professional camaraderie. Actually joking about her imminent demise and boasting over who was going to win the race to kill her while she posed as one of their servers and listened in.

She _was_ glad that she got them first. This wasn't how she wanted to broach the topic of her killing as a part of her job but it was bound to come up eventually. Of course, Casey had to choose a poisoning and she blanched at the historical characterization of poison as a 'woman's weapon'. She knew she could take Casey hand-to-hand now - as long as he didn't get her in an unfavorable grappling situation - and didn't care for the idea that she needed to rely on such a weapon. It just happened to be the right tool to handle that particular job expediently. Something that was hard to justify as self-defense or as a response to an imminent threat. It didn't even help her case that the victims were assassins.

Because so was she.

She was just better at it. And that was a point she didn't want to clarify either.

But the one thing she regretted about that conversation - more than breaking the seal on her prior use of lethal force or even the idea that she would harm Chuck's sister which Chuck surely realized was untrue by now - was drawing attention to the fact that her real name was not Sarah. If she was never going to see him again she didn't want one of the last things he remembered about her to be that he didn't even know her name.

Casey had probably already secured Chuck and that was a regret larger than anything she might have said. He had such a big heart and she had wanted to keep him free to live his life and share that with the world. She had known it almost immediately. Or at least after she overcame both her natural and conditioned cynical nature. It was why she fought to keep him out of confinement. It was important to her for reasons escaping her understanding that she know he was 'out there' somewhere. That the bitter world contained someone like him.

When she was briefed on Dr. Zarnow she had resigned herself to the fact that she would soon be seeing Chuck for the last time and she found solace in the hope that he would be free and happy. The first night, on their ill-fated date, she had accepted that their time was short - that they would inevitably be separated by their incompatible worlds - but she didn't foresee it happening like this.

With regret piled upon regret. A ruined evening of normalcy. Revelations of her true nature. Perceptions of a threat to the person Chuck loved the most. The removal of Chuck Bartowski from the world. And although she had supreme confidence that an opportunity for escape would present itself, the potential removal of a woman not-named-Sarah who hadn't been a real part of it for a long, long time.

"Sarah? Are you okay?"

And then suddenly there he was. Calling out to her in the name that he knew her by. Knowing it wasn't her real name and speaking it anyway breathed a tiny bit of life into the soulless clay that was Sarah Walker.

With Zarnow first thought dead and now outed as an enemy, even if the scientist could deliver on his promises of ridding him of the Intersect, Chuck's return to his normal life wasn't going to happen now. Her short-lived assignment as his protector was now indefinite in nature and the realities of that assignment dictated that she try to correct this behavior. He shouldn't be putting himself at risk like this and she told him so. Cruel words masking her appreciation - and elation - for considering her worth saving.

Even if he were not the Intersect he has no training for this. And even if he had the training he is still the Intersect and it was her job to make the necessary sacrifices to keep him out of enemy hands.

On this matter both the by-the-book, highly-trained agent and the hyper-cautious con artist agreed - Chuck should stay completely out of harm's way. With his freedom now off the table she was going to have to rely upon her detachment to both keep him and the secrets he held safe and protect her own secrets so he would allow her to do so. Since his trust of her had failed its first real test she would have to keep the focus on his safety and ignore any concerns about how he might perceive her.

But a newly discovered part of her she had only begun to notice in the past several days could barely hide either her pride or amusement that the completely untrained man she was supposed to be protecting had just come to rescue _her_.

.

* * *

.

021: Managing Expectations

.

Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, CA; Mon Oct 1, 2007 9:15 am

.

He came to save _her_.

The damn fool came to save her.

She barely had enough time to process it before Zarnow had returned and interrupted them but it had consumed her thoughts since last night.

When the mad scientist threatened her with torture Chuck gave away his position _and_ his identity.

To save her.

Her heart had been in her throat as she watched the helicopter he he was in barely miss the cranes at the docks.

Besides the fact that he was making her job impossible, when he actually _landed_ that helicopter with nothing but video game experience and her instructions she was suddenly infuriated by the fact that she could trust her to talk him through landing a fucking helicopter - even asking Casey to turn the phone over to her - but couldn't trust her to be in the same room as his friends and family.

She lost control of innumerable wildly conflicting emotions almost always carefully contained behind a manufactured icy cool exterior and lashed out at him.

And now there he was standing off to the side at the funeral of his former friend. Her former partner. His betrayer. Her lover. The man who had, according to Morgan, stolen Chuck's college girlfriend and, unknown to Morgan and more recently, enslaved him.

The man who she had always known better than to give her whole heart to and who had proven her right when he betrayed her and derailed her career. The man who had wrecked what was most important to both of them and thrown them together into a situation with no possible happy ending.

The man who had unwittingly brought Chuck Bartowski into her life.

She hadn't meant to lash out at Chuck like she had at the docks. In fact, part of her felt an unexplainable satisfaction in the fact that he found the woman he knew as Sarah Walker to be someone worth saving. But she had been hurt that he would believe that she could potentially be a traitor. That she could have harmed his sister - someone she had developed a certain fondness for in a matter of minutes.

She was still angry at Bryce for betraying her and everything she still stubbornly believed in. And Bryce had betrayed Chuck as well. More than once and in more than one way it would seem.

She and Chuck should have seen that as common ground. Instead Chuck had assumed that the commonalities were between the two spies and that she would betray him as Bryce had betrayed both of them. And maybe she had railed about his assumption that she had betrayed her country to hide the fact that she was most upset that he would think she could betray _him_.

And she had been livid that he would think she could harm his sister - the woman she had momentarily foolishly hoped could see her as a friend. Thinking on it now she realized that the biggest unaccounted for variable last night was that Chuck had feared for Ellie's safety more than his own.

Maybe it wasn't that he truly thought she would betray him but she knew from experience that when the thing you love most is threatened you aren't likely to take any chances. And keeping his promise to try to trust her would be difficult for anyone facing the possibility if such a loss. Much easier said than done.

Her distinction between believing her and trusting her was something he didn't yet understand. Or possibly complete bullshit and she was simply hiding the realities of her world because of the way they would be reflected in his perception of her. But why couldn't he see that she wasn't immune to the same effects of lying to these same people to keep them safe? That she didn't like it any more than he did. That, for his own good, in her case that approach extended to him. That she was trying to insulate him and spare him of some of the burden of knowing the things she knows. Give him less to worry about and less to lie about. To lessen his pain. Explaining all that would make it impossible to accomplish and reveal too much about her. She couldn't unring that bell. But she found herself wishing he could know just enough to see that she wasn't unaffected. Just better at hiding it.

She didn't know why she cared so much what Chuck thought of her - why it had upset her so much then or why she was dwelling on it now. She was here to say goodbye to Bryce. They had been partners and something more that she couldn't define but, ultimately, he had betrayed her. Still she had grown at least somewhat comfortable around him and watching them lower the casket into the grave made her wonder if she could ever allow someone to get even that close to her again. Much less open her whole heart to someone and trust them in the unquestioning way she had unrealistically hoped for from Chuck. She glanced over at Chuck and wondered whether he was here to say goodbye as well or here to support her.

She had wondered why Bryce was being buried in the Los Angeles area as he was shot in DC, hailed from Connecticut and his closest ties to California were to the Stanford University campus, over 300 miles north of LA. She had assumed that the CIA had simply chosen a convenient location for the few surviving mourners until she arrived and easily identified half of the attendees as agents. Clearly the whole affair was staged to ferret out any potential remaining accomplices.

She suspected the few others in attendance were former acquaintances from Stanford. Chuck pointedly avoided them all; standing off to the side watching her and leaning against a tree in that annoyingly adorable way of his.

She supposed it helped to secure Bryce's cover even in death. She ultimately decided it was irrelevant and saw no need to pursue the question further when she wondered for a moment where she would one day be buried and realized that no specific place came to mind.

Nowhere at all.

She suddenly realized that Chuck was right to assume she was like Bryce. Or any other spy, really. She had done everything that Casey had told him she had done and more. She was more often a scalpel rather than a shotgun but she _had_ cleaned an operation before. To an outsider it would seem she burned it to the ground. It was a fortuitous side-effect of the extreme manner in which she was usually utilized that this had always meant the additional people eliminated were themselves despicable people.

But even then Graham often questioned why various staff - people just going about their lives - were spared. She knew the guidelines and hid behind excuses of weighing the risks of potential witnesses against the risks of exposure by piling up even more dead bodies. But hadn't she recently - at least subconsciously - performed such a threat assessment on people she had known for years who were only trying to help her?

It had sickened her then - that such things were now so deeply ingrained in her thought process well before she consciously decided to act on them or not. She had often patted herself on the back about making righteous choices without acknowledging the mind-crime of considering the alternative in the first place. And it sickened her even more now as she wondered whether she could ever think of Chuck, or his sister, or any of the rest of his circle of family in that way. Or that he might think she would. Why should he think of her in any way other than as a despicable killer herself?

She was nothing more than a tool of the government. A reusable bullet. And currently that tool was deployed to defend Chuck not to fret about whether he could ever see her as anything more than the assassin that she was. As much as she wanted him to trust her she now realized he needed to believe her to truly do so. And all she could offer was half-truths and deflection.

Yet she knew he felt something unvoiced for her beyond her ability to understand. What must he think he sees in her for him to look at her the way he does? She should have been gone by now. He should have been free. Now she would have to stay by his side while he slowly but surely assembled the pieces of the puzzle that revealed her as someone just as toxic as anything Elena Truffaut had served to a gang of assassins. Discover that poison was just one of her many weapons and that _she_ was the true poison. Watch him slowly discover that whatever good he thought he saw in her simply wasn't there.

Here in this graveyard were the two men who had ever seemed to care about her as anything more than an agent or a partner on a con. One being lowered into the ground and the other her responsibility to keep from the same fate. And the dead one had only seemed to care - mistaking professional respect and a physical connection for a personal relationship - until she saw what real caring was when she met the one watching her from across the graveyard and the people he loved.

He may have come partly to see the man who had once been a friend laid to rest along with any hurts one had caused the other but she could tell now his attention was on her. That he wanted to come to her and comfort her but knew it wasn't permitted and suspected that it wasn't welcome. At just that glance from her he stood erect waiting for any additional signal that he was wrong on either count.

She suddenly desperately wanted him to come to her. To hold her and tell her there was some better ending in store for him or for her than any she could see. But it was a fleeting feeling, and a dangerous one as well. If she were to stay near enough to protect him she couldn't allow such wants to run free. When the jaws of the trap she could feel but not yet see tried to snap closed she simply had to be here to prevent him from being crushed. There weren't many people who assigned any worth to her life beyond what she could do for them. She owed it to him to do her job and keep him safe even if he, understandably, wasn't capable of trusting her to do so.

If Graham realized how important Chuck's well being had become to her he would surely replace her with someone more pliable and she would have sealed his fate with her foolish desires. There were simply some things she could never have and had no right to even want. He was right to fear her. She destroyed everything she touched.

She didn't often allow such morbid thoughts to consume her but tears were starting to threaten nonetheless - as much as they ever did - for all she had lost and what little she still had left to lose. She saw Casey shadowing Chuck and decided she had stayed long enough.

Tears demanded explanations and even though she was still barely winning the battle to keep them from falling she didn't want either of them to see her cry.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; Mon Oct 1, 2007 12:35 pm

.

"Knock, knock." he unnecessarily tested the waters. He didn't really have to announce himself - the bell above the door had done it for him and she had noticed his approach across the parking lot well before that. She appreciated, however, that he may be apprehensive after the last time they had spoken and after she had barely acknowledged him from a distance at the graveyard.

"Hey, Chuck." She used her best indifferent tone yet he still seemed wary.

"How is everything? I...I saw you at the funeral."

She refused to look him in the eye, afraid that her face might contradict the nonchalant air she was projecting. "Oh, uh, yeah, I had to go. After everything Bryce did, he was still my partner."

She busied herself with tidying the dining area and turned toward the counter to better keep her face from his view but Chuck followed her and said what he had really come to say. "Look, I... I... I'm not accusing you of anything...today. Yesterday, yes, I may have laid it on a little thick with the accusing. But I'm really sorry about that. Instead of not trusting you I should have been thanking you for saving my life and protecting the country and...and...and making really tasty gourmet wieners."

Sarah smiled as she processed several things. Most prominently that Chuck had just done two things right - he had apologized and, even more importantly, he knew what he was apologizing for. The former was something that Bryce or any other man she had known had rarely done and the latter was always a problem on the rare occasions that any of them _did_ apologize. Foolishly thinking empty words carried any meaning.

She also noted that she had articulated why she had felt it was necessary to attend Bryce's funeral even if she hadn't volunteered the full story. Chuck had not. Which indicated to her that Chuck had attended the funeral, at least partly, in hopes that she would be there and to both begin to make amends for failing to trust her and simply to support her. That he persisted in his efforts to apologize by coming here said a lot about his earnestness and she decided to respond in kind.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you." she said simply without attempting to justify last night's outburst.

Chuck's warm smile was all the confirmation she needed that the storm had passed. Was it really that simple? Just an honest admission of wrongdoing without qualifications or justifications and they were able to move forward with no harm done? She was relieved but the feeling was short lived as he tried to make light of the situation but only reminded her that, try as they might to trust one another, their partnership was founded on a deception. "It was our first fight. You know it's a big step if our relationship were remotely real."

_If our relationship were remotely real_. That was the second time he had used that phrase in two days and she was surprised that it hurt just as much the second time. Why was he even here? What does he think he sees in her to make him think there's anything resembling a real person underneath? Why risk himself - his heart or his life - to save her? She'll just drag him down to drown with her.

She chose to deal with that unexpected emotional response as she always dealt with such things. She stifled it - ignored it - pretended it didn't happen and then shifted her focus to more practical matters. Specifically the fact that he was stuck with the Intersect in his head and her and Casey as his protectors for the foreseeable future. "You know, with Dr. Zarnow gone, Chuck, those Intersect secrets aren't going anywhere. That means more missions, more danger, more secrets that you can't tell your sister or your friends..."

Chuck looked at her and responded softly. "I know that."

Sarah smiled at him and shared some of what she had been thinking about the man in front of her - just in an incredibly oblique way. It simply wouldn't do to blatantly compliment him on the blind, foolish bravery he had exhibited on multiple occasions in the last week. But he had to know that he was important. Not just for the secrets that he held or his ability to access them but for his willingness to do so. To do the right thing. He was already a hero, he just couldn't see what she saw. "Some people want to be heroes, and others have to be asked. So, Chuck, are you ready?"

She already knew what his answer would be and he didn't disappoint as he hesitantly offered a simple "Yeah." in response.

Sarah just stood and smiled. They really had been quite lucky in Bryce's selection of recipient for the Intersect. As much as she regretted it for him personally, if it were going to be stuck in someone's head they could have done a hell of a lot worse than Chuck. And if she were going to be stuck in the role of 'handler' indefinitely, far better to be protecting a man hard-wired to do the right thing who she could concentrate on protecting - and _wanted_ to protect because he was such a good person - rather than someone she had to goad and threaten into cooperation.

"Good." she responded without letting on any of that thinking.

She considered that maybe the joke was on all of them and Bryce had a more significant plan in mind when he had done what he had done but the thought was interrupted by another ringing of the bell over the door as Chuck's sister, Ellie, her boyfriend Devon, and Chuck's best friend since childhood, Morgan, entered the restaurant. "Hi." Ellie cautiously called out as Devon raised his hand in greeting to both her and Chuck.

"I hope we're not interrupting anything." Ellie continued with an expression that implied that she was actually incredibly hopeful that they were interrupting something.

Sarah supposed that she and Chuck had just made up - just not in the way Ellie clearly hoped - _if our relationship were remotely real_, she bitterly thought and wondered for a nanosecond if those specific words had been more testing for a reaction camouflaged within his sardonic sense of humor - and she looked up at Chuck to try to convey that everything _was_ OK.

And even if nothing was real that didn't necessarily mean that everything was faked.

"Uhh..." Chuck began as his eyes met hers and he cautiously continued "...by the way, I thought we'd give that dinner another shot. Maybe here?"

She glanced back to Chuck's 'family' as Morgan put an arm around Ellie's shoulder and called out "We knew you'd forgive him!"

Ellie removed Morgan's arm from her shoulder and Sarah thought to herself that she had just been played. But in a very good way. Chuck had come to smooth things over with her and then set up a do-over of the disastrous family dinner.

She was suddenly slightly overwhelmed when she realized what he was really doing. Telling her that he trusted her not just with his life but with theirs. Coming here himself was typical Chuck bravery, but bringing his sister was something else entirely. Inviting a spy like her into his world - his _family_ \- exposing the people he loved most to the danger of someone like her.

Given enough time to consider it last night she had realized that he had fixated on a tiny grain of doubt and understandably panicked at the threat to what he loved most in the world. And remotely real or not he was making a point of extending the invitation a second time to be included in this small but fiercely loyal family.

If it were purely for cover it could have waited until the next opportunity some evening later this week. The food definitely would have been better under that scenario but Chuck was emphasizing that the point was not the food but the company.

Sarah faced the almost startling revelation that Chuck Bartowski could be a pretty smooth operator in his own understated way. She would have to be even more careful to not let these types of gestures get under her skin and affect her judgment. Or give him any reason to think she was in any way worth wasting his beautiful heart on her.

But for the time being she set those thoughts aside, grinned at her guests and embraced the role of hostess. "Right..." she smiled at the small group of Chuck's friends and his amazing sister as she realized the potential flaw in this plan "...you all realize you have to eat my cooking."

As Chuck bit into a disastrously overcooked corn dog moments later he looked up to see Sarah nibbling her lower lip looking on, desperate for some sort of approval. For what he wasn't sure. There was no possibility whatsoever of it having anything to do with the thing-that-was-once-a-corn-dog he had just bitten into. He forced a small smile and received one in return as she visibly relaxed when he didn't spit it out. She knew it was horrible and couldn't believe he choked it down rather than saying so.

Chuck puzzled for a moment as he tried to reconcile the vicious Sarah he had seen in flashes - shooting out a surveillance camera after dumping a disguise and dispatching her opponents in a vicious street fight, artfully eviscerating a squad of supposedly trained men, Elena Truffaut poisoning a gathering of assassins, even turning her wrath on him (thankfully, only verbally) when he had hurt her with his distrust - and the sweet, vulnerable young woman who seemed to so desperately want his family's approval. Who supported him both literally and figuratively. Who bought him pancakes when his flashes debilitated him and invented stories about strangers over the lunches they both knew were only for cover.

He didn't know if he would ever be able to solve the puzzle that called herself Sarah Walker but he had always thought that the more challenging the puzzle, the more the challenge was its own reward. The most difficult ones were most worth the effort.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; Mon Oct 1, 2007 1:45 pm

.

An hour later, Chuck and his extended family were gone. Chuck had stayed for a few minutes to easily fix both a wonky temperature control on the frier that Sarah suspected would make her cover job infinitely less frustrating and a loose wire on the oven's convection fan that had likely doomed her test soufflés. She had thanked him and stood on tiptoes to quickly kiss him on the cheek as he left. He had blushed brilliantly at that and probably assumed it was for the benefit of the few remaining lunch patrons.

She hoped but doubted that he realized what she was really thanking him for. She was alone again wiping down tables and pondering whether she should be proud or frightened that they all seem to like her and, even more dangerously, that she likes them.

She decided on proud that they like her - or at least the version of her - this Sarah Walker she has filled in the blanks as she saw fit to portray to them. And completely terrified that she likes them. She shouldn't care about them at all but she is starting to understand why Chuck so desperately wants and needs to keep these people in his life.

The bell over the door rang and she looked up to see her reluctant partner.

"You missed dinner." she smiled at the puzzled look on his face. "Chuck brought them all over for a do-over of last night." she said as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Casey eventually grunted in understanding with a raised lip and a lilt to it that reflected an opinion that a 'do-over' was an entirely unnecessary thing to do. He took a seat and made a point of putting his hands palms down on the table's surface as he prepared to say what he came to say. "I think there are a couple of things you should know if we're going to continue to work together."

Sarah looked at the serious expression on his face and turned serious herself. She wiped her hands off and dropped her towel on the counter. Casey hadn't moved or spoken and showed no signs of doing either any time soon. He was contemplating the surface of the table and only when she took a seat in the chair opposite him did he look up and continue.

"First of all, all three of us had good reasons not to trust each other the last couple of days so I won't get into that." She really hadn't expected an apology from Casey and wasn't surprised that he wasn't offering one. "But you should know, when the kid saw you'd been taken, it was like he flipped a switch. The only thing that mattered to him was finding you." Sarah suddenly found herself desperately trying to conceal how affected she was by hearing that - how it made her heart feel both warm and tight.

She assumed she had been successful as Casey continued. "He wouldn't give up on you. Said it was our fault for not believing you and we had to save you. He was freaking out but kept his head enough to talk us through it. Nothing fancy, nothing high-tech - just deductive reasoning, asking the right questions and a bit of luck. Him testing the top speed of that little friggin Tylenol of a car. And _bang_, were at the Port of Los Angeles."

Sarah wanted to smile at that but suppressed the urge. It was all wrong. Hadn't she just been thinking that he was wrong to think she was worth risking his heart - much less his life. She had to start thinking like a handler. Her asset shouldn't be putting himself in harm's way for her. They should have sacrificed her and secured the man considered to be a critical intelligence asset. She could at least pretend to be the professional one of the group. And there was no upside to creating any suspicions by saying anything different. "Why didn't you secure him?" she asked. "You should have followed protocol." She was glad that he hadn't but it shouldn't have made her feel this good about herself.

"Zarnow put a tranq in me too. I wasn't exactly in the best condition to try and stop the kid from going after you." This puzzled Sarah. From what little she had figured out about the man, even a partially tranquilized John Casey would still attempt to follow the rules. Then Casey clarified.

"And he was right."

Sarah raised an eyebrow and Casey sighed before continuing. "Bartowski. He was right. I didn't expect him to actually go _in_ after you. He was supposed to stay in the damn car. But he was right that we had to come after you. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying he should get a vote on operational plans or anything - but he wasn't a liability out there. At least not until he went in alone. We still have to work on that but he's got the makings of a decent analyst, at least. Maybe we shouldn't completely dismiss his ideas out of hand. Just sayin'."

Sarah suspected that last bit was for Casey's own benefit. The whole story just reinforced her earlier thoughts that Chuck was absorbing her into the circle of people about whom he cared deeply whether she liked it or not. It was terrifying considering he was her responsibility to protect - and if he developed genuine feelings for her of any kind she would eventually end up hurting him - but it was strangely satisfying at the same time. And apparently Chuck was wearing down Casey's resolve as well.

She couldn't know that Casey was on the clock and struggling with his own loyalties - that he had been warned that in six months Chuck Bartowski's usefulness would run out. Casey was struggling with the idea of eliminating a particular target for one of the few times in his life. It was one of many possible outcomes and he simply hoped some sort of solution presented itself. The kid was a pain in the ass but he didn't ask for any of this. And Walker...Walker might become a problem depending on what order ultimately came down. Casey knew from experience that such timelines were often optimistic but, either way, a lot could happen in six months.

Sarah did however consider what Casey was saying about Chuck's actions under fire. He didn't like lying _to_ those close to him but he would lie to _protect_ those close to him. He was clever. It wasn't street smarts per se. He was just...shrewd. She supposed that was the word for it. Yet somehow without an ounce of guile. She was glad to hear Casey say he had developed a similar opinion. And, no, when it came down to their primary purpose - Chuck's own safety - Chuck didn't get a vote. But it was good to know Casey would be less inclined to automatically dismiss Chuck's opinions on other matters.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Casey continued. "I followed him to Larkin's funeral today. Saw you there."

Sarah knew that. She had spotted him easily but didn't want to make a point of telling him that. Distrust wasn't such an easy thing to wash away. There may come a point in the future where it would work out more in her favor if he were not motivated to be extra careful in concealing his movements. "Well, the man _was_ my partner off-and-on for two years."

"But that's not all he was, was he?"

Sarah gave him a look that seemed to dare him to press this point. Casey sat up straighter and raised his hands a tiny bit - splaying out his long fingers and hyper extending the tips toward the ceiling with the heels of his palms never leaving the table.

In that gesture it was easy for Sarah to identify the three that had been badly broken over the years as Casey seemed to retreat slightly. "I didn't come here to give you shit about it. I'll just assume I'm right on that one. The other thing I wanted you to know was that I was at the research facility with Beckman and Graham the night that Larkin stole the Intersect. When he did it, I figured out his likely escape plan based on the route he was taking tearing through the facility. I was waiting outside in case he evaded the security detail."

Casey paused for a moment and Sarah was getting a sinking feeling of where this conversation was going.

"And then he evaded the security detail." Casey continued flatly and confirmed her suspicions. "If we're going to work together I think you should hear it from me - I'm the one who killed him."

The good feeling was gone. The smile fell from her face as she sighed and sat back in her chair. She resisted the urge to go for a weapon or lash out in any way at all and placed her hands on the table mirroring Casey but drumming her fingers as she breathed deeply and let the anger wash over her and then slowly dissipate. She now understood why he had adopted that posture when he first sat down. She also wondered whether that was why Graham had wanted her out of Burbank before Casey arrived that second day.

If they were going to be a successful team there couldn't be any more repeats of the throw down between her and Casey that had been interrupted in this very restaurant just the day before. She was pissed - and she knew it wasn't even a rational response - someone had to have taken the shot.

When she had first heard what Bryce had done she had considered the fact that she herself would have done it had she been there. It may have crushed her soul into nothingness but she would have done it. She briefly doubted that it was mere coincidence that the two of them were assigned to protect Chuck. That it was instead some grand conspiracy. Beckman maneuvering to seize sole control of the project hoping for an unprofessional outburst of some kind to discredit her and provide an excuse to request her removal.

But it was clear that Casey's prior involvement was the reason he was here and Sarah's proximity on the first day - along with Graham's desire to redeem his agency's involvement in the project - was the real reason for her involvement. She wanted to exonerate herself but her prior association with Bryce would always be a potential mark against her and she didn't ever want to provide anyone the ammunition to use her as a pawn in their own games. So after both she and Casey sat there staring at each other for over a minute she finally said "Thanks for telling me yourself. You were just doing your job. It...it had to be someone."

They were both silent for a few moments and Sarah decided to press her slight advantage while she had one. "Why did you tell Chuck about Elena Truffaut?"

Casey puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly as he sat back in his chair as Sarah had; hands remaining on the surface of the table. "I needed an advantage. And I had been looking into you." When Sarah raised an eyebrow at that he pushed back harder. "I don't like being lied to."

As Sarah began to straighten in her seat he calmly clarified. "Not you. Your boss."

Sarah sighed in exasperation "What are you talking about Casey?"

"Your jacket. You've got mine, right?" Sarah nodded. Beckman and Graham had agreed to swap the files of their agents and provide the information to their new partners as a sign of trust. "Yeah." she said. "Got your service record and your NSA file. Partially redacted but that's to be expected. It even had that mess in Paraguay in there. Not your finest moment there Casey."

"Opinions vary on that." If Sarah expected to get a rise out of him she failed completely. Despite what it had done to his career, Casey obviously didn't regret his actions one bit. "We both know what your boss thinks of me and why. You know how much he hates being embarrassed. He decided to get cute and do exactly what we asked. He gave us absolutely everything there is to know...about Sarah Walker."

"Oh." Sarah knew exactly what Graham had done. It would have pissed her off too.

"I don't care what your real name is but obviously, I'm not going to be comfortable working with someone whose Swiss-cheese dossier only covers less than a tenth of her adult life - so I started digging." Sarah cringed imperceptibly as he continued.

"Started looking at the negative spaces. What was going on around Sarah Walker? What was going on when there was no Sarah? I know a guy who's really good at finding documents that don't exist. Elena was just the first thing he found. I may not know everything - and I told him to drop it. He doesn't know why I was asking for the reports that I was asking for but if I'm right about half the stuff he sent me last night - stuff that matches up with your documented absences and coincidentally-nearby postings - then Elena's just the tip of the iceberg. We all knew Graham had a secret weapon in his pocket. His Wild Card Enforcer they all said. But no one knew who you were. You've been everywhere and nowhere at the same time. You're a god damned ghost."

Professional pride won out and Sarah smiled diabolically at Casey's palms still flat against the table. This wasn't him coming to her with any need to apologize. This was someone who just realized how big the bear they were poking truly was. He was sitting across the table from a fellow apex predator and this was his way of acknowledging that he had learned and accepted that fact.

For the moment, the fact that he was equally dangerous was ignored except for the change in his demeanor as he truly looked at her as an equal for the first time. Sarah noticed the difference. She thought to herself _The Boogeyman never looks quite like what you expected, does he?_ but chose to say to her reluctant partner "Not bad for a CIA skirt, huh?"

Casey smiled a sneering smile. "Not bad at all. Jesus, Walker. I've been doing this for twenty years and you've almost caught up to me in less than half the time. I can't believe you pulled off that thing in Holland solo. There can't be more than five people in the world who could have done it that clean without firing a single..."

"Casey, stop." she plastered on a fake smile, leaned forward and feigned modesty "Stop." She felt like all the blood in her body had been drained out. Or had gone straight to her stomach. She hadn't thought about Holland in a long time. And there were several more like it she didn't want to think about either. He hadn't found nearly all of the 'negative spaces' or he wouldn't be under the delusion that she still had any catching up to do.

As Graham's enforcer she had lapped him ages ago and was closer to doubling up on him than being tied with him. She and Graham had talked about John Casey a few times before and, when Graham had implied that very thing, she had deflected by quoting Charlotte Whitton: _'whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good - luckily, this is not difficult'_.

Graham thought that was funny as hell at the time and now he probably hoped Casey would put the pieces together himself only to end up eating humble pie for his efforts. Sarah felt no urge to claim her superiority by that particular measure. "I'm glad you realize now that I'm up for the job."

God, how she wanted to puke but that wouldn't help perpetuate this image that Casey apparently needed in order to view her as a capable partner.

Casey was still looking back at her with a new level of respect - at least she had passed his test. He just nodded with a curt grunt, stood slowly and deliberately walked toward the door - still being careful not to make any sudden movements.

She surprised herself when she couldn't resist blurting it out. "Just...please don't tell him about any others, OK?"

Casey paused in the doorway and offered with a sigh of exasperation "It's all in his noggin somewhere anyway." Sarah wondered if Chuck would have been as hell bent on finding her last night if he had known exactly the type of person for whom he was risking his own life. It was a testament to her ability to conceal and separate her identities over the course of her career that Chuck hadn't flashed on her more than he already had.

"And you saw the problems _that_ caused." Sarah just stared at Casey hoping she didn't have to elaborate on why she didn't want the ugly truth of her... 'proficiency'... discussed with Chuck. To make up some story about why she didn't want him to see any more pieces of her puzzle than he already had.

Luckily, Casey just rolled his eyes a little and said "Fine. You'd think he'd want to appreciate how good he's covered, though."

"Thanks." she said as Casey gave a little nod and let the door close behind him. Once he was gone Sarah let her façade collapse with a ragged breath praying he didn't turn back around to say something else or that no other customer came in just then. She hopped up from her chair and latched the door as she took in a few short breaths and bit her lip while tears formed for the second time that day but didn't quite threaten to fall from her eyes.

She just needed a moment to catch her breath. Was that what had triggered her outburst last night? That while torn by all of these conflicting pieces of information about the world of espionage and her place in it Chuck hadn't cleanly resolved all of that in his hyperactive mind and expressed any kind of _appreciation_ for her keeping him out of a bunker? Something she knew he saw as nothing more than a cage. Because that was what she had implied. That without her his life was over.

She felt even worse about it now. She had pointed at the sword hanging by a thread over his head and he had thanked her for saving his life but she hadn't done the same or even acknowledged the colossal unfairness of it all. A burden he almost always bore with a smile or a joke or graciously offering a helping hand to others who thought their problems were worthy of his concern.

Was she really so self-absorbed that she thought the potential for being seen for exactly what she really was in any way compared to the crushing burden imposed on Chuck every moment of every day for the foreseeable future? Or justified her drawing attention to the precarious position he was in or the fate from which she was trying to protect him?

Even so, the idea of someone as kind and good-hearted as Chuck actually _appreciating_ that part of her life had stomped on her chest and she almost hadn't been able to hide it from Casey.

When leaving for one of _those_ missions she had made the mistake of mentioning just the destination in Bryce's presence. When word got out about what occurred in that particular city - and word always got out, that was the psychological element of the repercussions Graham had established for crossing the CIA or him specifically - Bryce put two and two together. He, like Casey, had looked at her with a new level of respect and perhaps more than a little bit of fear.

He started referring to such missions as Keyser Söze missions. Shortly before he disappeared something had prompted him to say it again and she made him explain what it meant. A tale of scorched earth and uncompromising annihilation of enemies and anyone affiliated with them. She had never allowed him to touch her again.

She was more than that. More than Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. More than the Boogeyman of the spy world.

Wasn't she?

She had worked so hard to become the best of the best. Aspired to it. Achieved it. And ultimately embraced it for a time - perhaps reveled in it too much at some points. In recent years, she occasionally thought she had found some sense of balance in a world gone mad. Why did she feel so ashamed of her place in that world now?

She sat back down in her previous seat and tried to focus on the positives. Chuck had apologized. Casey had come as close as she suspected he ever would. They both respected her professionally for entirely different reasons. Sarah remained sitting in her chair contemplating the universe's sick sense of humor.

That she would be entrusted with the protection of a remarkable, intriguing young man deemed an invaluable intelligence asset - one whose possible reaction to the kinds of things the NSA agent had unearthed about her she couldn't stop thinking about - alongside that same NSA agent as a reluctant partner who had killed her own former partner - and lover - who in turn had involved that asset - the innocent man who became the 'Intersect' - based somehow on a long since severed history as college roommates...

..._Simple_ she thought with every bit of sarcasm she possessed.

That the sweetest man she had ever known had put his faith in what she - when she stripped away all the justifications and semantics - considered to be two of history's most accomplished killers not calling themselves King, President, Emperor, Führer or any other leader in a position of command over people like her. People with her special skill set. Instruments of destruction.

She sat for a few minutes in her pigtails staring into space with her hands in her lap and her legs out straight with her feet pigeon-toed in front of her. Looking far more like a little girl than the deadly woman she had become.

She took a few deep breaths and managed to push aside the waking visions of all the people she had killed over the years - no longer clamoring for their revenge but instead laughing at the thought of her ever being anything more than the cutthroat that she had become.

That she _is_.

The very thing that proved her suitability for the job to her new partner was one of the many things she desperately wanted to remain concealed from the man they were protecting.

.

* * *

"This thing of darkness, I Acknowledge mine."

(_The Tempest_, Act V, Scene 1)

* * *

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: This last quote from _The Tempest_ is one character referring to another as well as to the dark qualities of that character that he comes to see in himself. Here it is in what Sarah is seeing reflected back in _herself_. At first indignant at being seen as capable of wicked deeds then admitting it is a more than fair assessment. Someone asked me why she would rip into Chuck and this is what I think she is struggling with. No such grand shifts here just yet - Sarah's journey is a bit slower - but, while the play does not have a tidy ending, in both cases this acceptance is part of a process of renouncing evil and moving forward.

Apologies to at least one reader for not making any explicit adjustments to the actual dinner scene. I think it's actually pretty spot on in the show with lots of flexible interpretations of various elements - which this story is built on. These additional thoughts and motivations do not actually alter the events themselves that much so I chose to address it in retrospect.

Keep that feedback coming because I do sometimes use it. You may notice explicit reference to the thinly veiled threat Sarah made on the docks that wasn't part of the original draft. (Note that I don't actually agree with Sarah that her concerns are inconsequential compared to Chuck's but I think she might think so.) I also take advantage of an opportunity for a slight revisiting of the 'Tijuana checklist' I have discussed with a few of you that hopefully - better late than never - clarifies that element.

I don't know the actual filming location for Bryce's funeral but Forest Lawn in Glendale seemed reasonable and conveniently convenient. Burying someone from Connecticut, who was killed in (or near) Washington, D.C. anywhere on the west coast makes little sense but we now know it was a show funeral anyway. When you submit yourself to a life as a non-person even your final resting place is subject to the whims of The Agency.

Until next time...


	9. IX: What Might Have Been

...wherein Sarah contemplates exit strategies, cover maintenance, the man Chuck should have been and the lengths to which he will go to earn her approval...

Canon Reference: Most of 'Tango' (ep 1.03)

Contents: Three chapters; the first one of medium length and the other two relatively short.

A/N: I initially thought Tango was a pretty thin episode but the approach I took made it as good a time as any to start talking about IIEP / seductions in preparation for their inclusion in later plot lines. Keeping my original warnings in mind and with the tone thus far, it would be disingenuous to completely ignore or even downplay the concept of sex as a weapon of espionage. Basically, nefarious fictional spy organizations are not _selectively_ nefarious.

So Tango will be covered over three installments. This one is very introspective and relatively innocuous. The next is pretty ugly - but also contains key Sarah backstory elements - and is completely non-canon flashbacks. I will summarize key events at the end of the Tango arc (presumably end of Part XI) for those who choose to skip Part X.

Oh, one more thing on a much lighter note:

Sarah never did know that Chuck learned the wrong part of the tango...

.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: You will run across what you may think is an Easter Egg referencing a song by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock but you'll be wrong - that was not the intention (but don't let that stop you from singing it to yourself and doing a little chair dance - I know I did...). No ownership of CHUCK, _Tron_, _Avengers_ (obliquely - see end notes) or _Pulp Fiction_ is asserted or implied. (The _Pulp Fiction_ quote adds absolutely nothing to the story, it's just something I think to myself every time I order an 'espresso beverage' at Starbucks. Every. Time.)

.

* * *

Part IX: What Might Have Been

* * *

.

022: Five Dollar Coffee

.

* * *

"That's a pretty fucking good milkshake. I don't know if it's worth five dollars but it's pretty fucking good."

\- Vincent Vega, _Pulp Fiction_

* * *

.

Starbucks, Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; Fri Oct 5, 2007 8:30 am

.

After their quick briefing at the Buy More, the agent calling herself Sarah Walker had come in for a cup of coffee with a purpose in mind other than a caffeine fix. She had been here several times over the past two weeks whenever she could avoid the sludge Scooter called coffee at the Weinerlicious but this was only the second time she had used this particular card to pay.

The first time she used it was three days after she arrived. Just a simple cup of whatever so-called 'bold' brew they had. Two dollar coffee - code for a simple check-in while on assignment with no specific duration but expected to be a milk run. The primary purpose of the card was simply to establish a location. The amount of the purchase - no matter the product (though they had seemed to settle on coffee) - was the other half of the message.

Today was one of the few times she had used it for something less cheap - her preferred skinny vanilla latte and a croissant added up to slightly over the target number. Five dollar coffee - long-term assignment. Expectations of being in the same location for any significant period of time were rare. She usually spent no more than a month in any one place. Her mission here in Burbank had transitioned to indefinite in duration and she was just now getting around to updating this portion of their contact protocols.

She had driven across town to an out of the way Internet cafe to check the account yesterday as part of her habit of checking it along with her secret voicemail and other communication protocols every couple of days. She could check the transactions by phone but needed online access if she was simply curious about the location and didn't want to speak to their banker as she would in the event of an actual emergency. These types of places were getting harder to find and she thought they might need to update their protocol.

She and her former partner had managed to keep the banker's name out of a drug sting in exchange for his help with setting up the account with a no-questions-asked card. The account balance was far lower than those of his usual customers but if he didn't want to be indicted for money laundering he would extend them every courtesy.

Her partner had argued - in front of the blubbering man - that they needed the resources more than the EU needed one more dirty banker out of circulation. Bankers didn't usually put themselves in situations where they could be dealt with as decisively as drug lords and their gangs (as her partner preferred) but he also didn't seem to have been an active participant, just a negligent one. He was now far more careful with whom he did business.

They each routed a portion of their government pay via cash transactions of a few thousand dollars at a time whenever they were able. She also had several stashes of funds in various credit unions under various aliases in several coastal cities near D.C. but this particular account was intended to only be used to send such messages. She used another to automatically pay a few related items like the phone service she kept only for voicemail.

She briefly entertained the idea of asking Chuck's technical advice on a small device she could use to more conveniently access the account statement. Obviously without explaining why she needed something like that or highlighting that it would need to be something which the CIA knew nothing about.

She saw the recent two-dollar-ish coffee charges that belonged to her - the most recent in Burbank several days ago, another in Budapest before that, San Sebastián before that and Johannesburg before that. The lone charge during that time that was not hers was in Buenos Aires.

_Great. She wouldn't be at all hard to find there._

Then again her friend and former partner did tend to stand out and she herself was assigned to a city in Los Angeles county and LA was the second most populous city in the US. Larger even than Buenos Aires. But 'Burbank' was a little more specific. She would be pretty easy to find if her friend just asked around this plaza and she hoped the situation in Argentina was similar. Luckily they had other means to refine their searches should they become necessary.

She wondered if coffee was as expensive there because the unfamiliar charge was a roughly five dollar charge also indicating a long term assignment. But then those same types of charges had been bouncing around Argentina for a few weeks. It must have been the same assignment with a shifting focus. It was unusual which was why she decided to check the location so she knew. Just in case. All she really cared about was that there were no excessively large charges. Larger than could be accounted for by the cost of coffee even in Scandinavian countries.

There were several triggers that could result in either of them jumping into action. If one of them couldn't simply call their direct line even to leave a hang up message, a large charge was an SOS. As was a failure to update a draft email in a shared email account that had never actually sent a message. The most recent updates had been pictures featuring various house cats in stupid situations with ridiculous captions. She was going to have to talk to her about that.

Her old partner could be a little unpredictable but not about this. They both updated their various statuses like clockwork. Both were too prideful to let the call go out unless absolutely necessary much less due to neglectful sloppiness. The CIA Agent had pawned off her responsibilities on other assignments several times before under the guise of 'pursuing a lead'. Twice to respond to a distress call and a few times for other reasons. The non-existent leads never panned out of course because the reality was that she was answering such a call for help and she was willing to take the risk because she knew she could expect the same courtesy.

She always worried about seeing that large charge or having to make one herself to call in reinforcements if her own agency was as cavalier about cutting her loose when a mission went bad. Everyone needed a safety net and this one was more reliable than most. And God help anyone who got in either of their paths.

.

* * *

.

They referred to the account itself as their 'rainy day fund'. Her friend had laughed in that unsettling, maniacal way she sometimes did at a suggestion of calling it a retirement fund even though she had managed to fund it far more than the CIA agent had. She had pointed out that between them they had 'retired' plenty of people who no longer had any use for earthly things as common as money.

It was more a small rebellion than any sort of real plan. As closely watched as their personal accounts were, their transactions didn't raise any red flags. It wasn't uncommon or suspicious for agents to piss away most of their own money. What else were they going to do with the money they had little need of while living mostly expense free when constantly reminded of their own mortality? It would be equally foolish to think either of them would ever truly retire.

She couldn't really argue with that. Sure, either of them could take the money and run but to what purpose? Lie on a beach for a few weeks or months or hide in seclusion for a couple of years at most until a government grab team ultimately located and cornered her? There wasn't any real personal reason to leave the life that would justify becoming hunted as either a rogue agent or - given the unconventional nature of both their recruitment - so that either of the two agencies could reclaim their valuable resources and put them back to work.

She had to search for it given the apparent lack of options but she still found some satisfaction in her job. Maybe she was doing some good and maybe it was just exciting. Maybe not enough satisfaction to fully suppress such thoughts or make up for the uglier aspects but when she was done masquerading as Sarah Walker what else could she really be? She was _good_ at this. How many people could say they were among the best in the world at their profession? And she held out hope that she could eventually steer her career to something more palatable.

Officially being assigned as handler to an extremely important intelligence asset wasn't a particularly promising turn in that direction. Especially for this particular asset.

There were numerous reasons this assignment was troubling but one specifically was entirely new. She had never before been on an assignment where she would have worried about abruptly leaving if she had an emergency signal from her former partner. Only now did she realize how many times - emergency or otherwise - she had briefly disappeared and how fortunate she had been to never suffer any extreme consequences.

She now had the additional worry of leaving Chuck with Casey if she has to answer such a message; possibly causing a panic move to secure Chuck if Graham or others thought she had gone rogue. Maybe based on recent experiences Casey would cover for her briefly. She would have to consider laying some groundwork about why she might vanish unexpectedly now that more than her own status was at risk and Bryce had damaged her credibility.

.

* * *

.

Having established her status protocols she could once again look at the cup and pastry as simply a tasty treat and found a nice comfy chair in the corner to enjoy her latte before her shift started. An overly attentive barrista was hovering around while cleaning and had asked twice if there was anything she needed - clearly working up the nerve to ask something else. After subtly mentioning something about her boyfriend, polite excuses were exchanged and she was left to her coffee.

_Boyfriend._

She had never acted as a handler for an asset on a long-term basis but had been trained for it. There were many aspects about that particular toolkit that made her uncomfortable under any circumstances.

Manipulating a man into doing what she wanted was something she would tolerate on a more typical mission but wasn't something she wanted any part of in a long-term scenario. Posing as a romantic partner was fine with a fellow agent. Most knew better than to press their luck and the others learned quickly.

On the other hand, some assets seemed to think an agent's company in the bedroom was part of the entertainment package. Most at least pressed their advantage in public situations. But Chuck was different. Even more different than she had first perceived.

The parts of the toolkit she - and almost every agent - found distasteful were more about two types of assets. The unwitting ones who assumed she was an ordinary woman who was interested in him and possibly requiring her to be 'convincing' to varying degrees for a short time. Or the non-cooperating ones who thought women were one of many things on the negotiating table.

Luckily even Graham was less likely to use any woman in such a blatantly disgusting way. There were some things he considered viable tactics to get what he wanted. He did have lesser agents for that and might consider using one of them to influence an extremely valuable asset - _one like Chuck_ she briefly considered - but generally, once they were aware of the futility of their situations, he cared little for what one of his assets or informants wanted.

Which led her to another unsettling thought. Graham thought of agents as extensions of his will. As such, he didn't consider their feelings per se, but did consider which actions would lessen their utility. He would sacrifice them if necessary - physically or psychologically - but she had some degree of confidence that he would weigh their future usefulness to him against the necessity of such a thing.

He didn't have the same consideration for assets and informants. They were property. If subtle approaches did not produce results or they became too demanding he had no problem strong-arming what he needed from them rather than indulging their whims. That included threats, torture, confinement - the bunker she had convinced Graham, in terms he would understand, would reduce Chuck's utility - and even termination if the individual was deemed too great of an ongoing security risk.

She had been given such an assignment once. She had struggled with the idea of it but had actually caught the former asset in the process of selling government secrets. Gunfire had erupted, he had tried to escape...she had done what had to be done. She always did what had to be done. Knowing what he had planned to do she wondered if she would have felt worse about killing him after sneaking in while he slept or while he sat enjoying his coffee. She knew she would and wondered why.

Chuck had unknowingly put himself in the top drawer of the asset handling toolbox - cooperating asset. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to help people. He wanted rid of the Intersect, of course, but he had never asked for any of this and was truly making the best of it. He was special. She had convinced Graham that his utility would be reduced if they tried to coerce him in any way. There had been no mention of Ellie - and she knew it would be phrased as 'the sister' if it ever happened - but Sarah wanted to block that option before it was even considered.

Chuck's continued cooperation kept Graham from questioning it but if he ever unilaterally decided that Chuck's mere existence was too great of a security risk he wouldn't hesitate to end that existence.

Luckily, she knew she was still Graham's best. Still the extension of his will he would have chosen even if she had not been the most convenient option to counteract John Casey in what was certainly a metaphorical arm-wrestling contest with General Beckman over control of the Intersect. Or at least she hoped so. He wouldn't remove her unless she gave him a reason to do so. She had to never give him any reason to doubt that she would do what had to be done. Whatever needed to be done.

But what would she really do? Certainly not take the shot. But tip him off? Go to war with Casey while he ran? To where? Would Casey take the shot? She knew his reputation but she also knew her own and that hers didn't match the reality of this situation. Casey had some personal code of honor and despite his squint-hard-enough-and-it-looks-fraternal way of interacting with Chuck she didn't know how such a scenario would play out with Casey.

When it came to Chuck, she liked to think that she would make a stand. Sure he was cute and sweet but that wasn't it. Not entirely, anyway. She couldn't afford to make choices based on such childish thoughts. But he was special. He was different. He did the right thing. He deserved a protector who did the same. Otherwise she was just his jailer.

To the rest of the world she was his 'girlfriend'. Continuing the ruse from their first date was the expedient thing to do. It also kept her in a really nice suite with a story about the manager being a family friend since Chuck had told Ellie where she lived before that first date. It wasn't meant to be a long-term thing but Zarnow's betrayal left them with few options.

That left her where she had started - pondering the fact that part of the legend of Sarah Walker was that she had a 'boyfriend' - a cute, sweet, funny boyfriend - and considering a problem with securing that cover that she never thought she would encounter.

.

* * *

.

It was something she had hoped to discuss with Chuck when she had pulled him into the media room. Something other than the photographs of dead smugglers that Casey's quick intervention required them to focus on first. Chuck's reaction to the photos - asking why the dead men were _sleeping_ of all things - was just the adorable naïveté that was part of the problem. She couldn't help but smile at the memory of it, and the offhanded way he excused himself while simultaneously subtly chastising her and Casey for their bickering before flashing unexpectedly. Not on the photos of dead agents but on a photo in the newspaper under Jeff Barnes' arm.

The problem itself was what Chuck referred to as PDA. Public Displays of Affection, of course. Something she herself had utilized extensively as part of a cover or even an impromptu tactic to blend into a crowd or allay suspicion. But it was always completely devoid of any passion and never out of any overwhelming need to kiss someone beyond her ability to control. But Chuck didn't really know or need to know about all that. He just needed to realize that as far as anyone not associated with a government agency knew, not only did they spend most lunch breaks together and often have breakfast together, but she and Chuck had been on three official dates and that carried certain expectations.

First was their interrupted evening of dinner and dancing culminating with watching the sun rise over the Pacific. That was the sanitized version she had sold to Ellie and everyone but Casey believed to be true.

Second was their assessment with Dr. Zarnow. Chuck had implied it was somehow the only second date he had been on in years which just further convinced outsiders that the two of them were already engaged in his most serious relationship since college.

And finally the disastrous family dinner - the highlight of which was Chuck somehow pulling off a tablecloth magic trick that (with an assist from Casey) had resulted in the death of the dessert she had prepared.

Yet they had convinced everyone that their relationship had survived his bizarre behavior up to and including that stunt. In fact, while Chuck had watched her eat a light breakfast earlier in the week as he nursed a coffee he had confided in her that, when Ellie had demanded an explanation for his behavior that night, he had attributed it to nervousness.

He went on to say that he hadn't met anyone since his last girlfriend who made him feel this way. Who made him feel alive. That it wasn't often he met someone he liked so much who seemed to like him back. Only later had she realized that he hadn't explicitly indicated that all of those thoughts were things he had shared with Ellie.

The possible hidden truths had surprised her. It was Chuck being Chuck; tentative and bold at the same time. A testing of the waters knowing intuitively there were meant to be boundaries between them though they had only ever said out loud that their status was a cover. It felt like a question wrapped in an admission.

An _I-like-you-do-you-like-me_ question. Like the notes the boys in every school in every city used to ask her to pass to the prettier girls with the more flattering clothes that fit properly.

One that she should have dismissed as just as juvenile yet felt just as nervous about answering as he had seemed to about asking-without-asking.

One she wasn't free to answer honestly and, as she considered all the reasons not to allow herself to become too comfortable with their cover as boyfriend and girlfriend, was frankly frightened to answer.

But it had also occurred to her over the course of the week that they were going to have to show physical affection to one another in order to be believable. Especially if the nature of their now-indefinitely-extended mission required her to interact with him believably in any kind of public setting while on a mission. At least he would see that as a perk, right?

She certainly didn't mind that it might be necessary for her to kiss a sweet, kind man that she thought was pretty cute. Rules being what they were she would take what she could get. She knew she wasn't that ugly duckling anymore and with the way she often caught him looking at her she didn't think he would object.

When she had entered the Buy More this morning she had been uncharacteristically excited, nervous and wary about her idea of springing the idea of a cover kiss on him. She hadn't wanted to make him overthink it and thought she might have to talk to him later about keeping it professional and that the cover didn't translate into reality but all the while hoped he saw it for what it really was: the only honest answer she could give him to his _I-like-you-do-you-like-me_ question.

She had already said it plainly once over margaritas. Far too plainly. So much so that she had shocked herself. _I like you, Chuck._ But she could hide the truth of that utterance inside his doubt that it had been anything other than a spy being a spy - saying what she thought would lower his guard rather than the accidental admission it actually was - and put her armor firmly back in place.

It would cause all sorts of questions for her to just come out and say it again.

I like you but I can't.

_We_ can't. But she could offer a more physical answer.

Certainly public and certainly a display but not entirely devoid of affection.

It was terribly unfair - both to him and to her - but certainly far more so to him. He wasn't trained to separate actions from feelings like she was. And she was almost certain that it wasn't that he didn't want to kiss her. It was more that he would have to kiss her like he meant it while not meaning it. He would have to prevent his actions from boring into his heart just as she steeled herself to prevent them from boring into hers. Any indication that she meant what she was portraying could make Graham reconsider her suitability leaving Chuck at the mercy of his next jailer or protector.

And it did open up the possibility of Graham changing tactics and sending one of his Valentine operatives rather than a full agent like her; opting for control - a trump card over Beckman - over protection. She was sure her personal distaste for such tactics in general was what turned her stomach and made her skin feel burning hot at the idea. Certainly not the doubts over whether Graham had anyone good enough to get someone as earnest as Chuck to fall for her.

_Fall for IT_. She mentally corrected herself. _Those tactics_. She sighed and drained the last of her latte.

Given the much larger concerns she felt a little bit guilty that she had actually been disappointed that, far from abusing the opportunity, his reluctant peck on the cheek had been more like a child kissing a not-well-liked distant relative.

She hadn't been able to resist reacting with a disappointed "_That's it?!_" before pulling him into the media room before Casey interupted. For a well reasoned explanation of why she needed his best effort - as close to something real as he could share with her - or a second surprise attempt disguised as practice she still wasn't sure.

Only later had it occurred to her that maybe Chuck understood all of this. That he already knew where he firmly stood. That maybe the 'P' and the 'D' weren't the problem but rather the 'A'.

The _I-like-you_ portion of his question.

The _I won't pretend I don't mean it_ part.

She had thought it was _only_ a kiss.

But maybe she had been worried about the wrong person overthinking the physical opportunities their cover provided.

.

* * *

.

023: Charles Carmichael

.

Weinerlicious, Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; Sat Oct 6, 2007 11:15 am

.

She had been thinking about it off and on for most of the past twenty-four hours and it was something they would have to discuss at some point. She would have to decide behind which wall to hide her true thoughts on the matter - coldly clinical or apologetic - but neither allowed her to tell him the true answer to his question.

_I-like-you-do-you-like-me?_

A question she only knew how to answer with actions. Actions she knew she could explain away as professional separation of feelings from actions and hide her ulterior motive behind an ulterior motive. Actions that he was reluctant to entertain. Likely because he was so incapable of separating his feelings from his actions.

And she wanted to kiss him for that alone.

She set the question of PDA aside because the other concern occupying her thoughts was the more pressing one: her worry about putting Chuck in harms way even though, as Casey had pointed out, it was 'just' an art auction. They had skipped this mornings intel briefing in order to review their options regarding La Ciudad at Casey's new apartment across the courtyard from Chuck's and she hadn't seen him yet today.

She crossed the parking lot a little earlier than planned as she dealt with the fact that she had been out-voted three to one - not that this extended mission was a democracy - regarding Chuck's readiness to be involved in a field assignment in any capacity. He was meant to be an intelligence resource and she hadn't properly considered that their proximity to the second largest city in the US could lead to actual operational needs.

She was trying to reconcile her own arguments in her mind. The conflicting opinions that he should not be put in protective custody but should be protected as much as possible while _not_ in protective custody. She wanted to keep him safe. But the only way to minimize the danger from all threats was to allow him to be put in harm's way.

It was so fucked up.

Casey should already have informed him of Beckman and Graham's decision to include him in the mission and, as she entered the Buy More, she finally admitted to herself that no one but her really thought allowing Chuck to basically maintain his pre-Intersect lifestyle was a sustainable situation. She realized that she was kidding herself and, as much as she didn't like it, Chuck would have to show that he could operate in some capacity in the field when and if it became necessary. At least if he wanted to retain some semblance of freedom. She didn't expect him to do what she and Casey were capable of as trained agents but instead just hoped he could keep himself out of trouble.

She grinned at that thought because she had to admit, based on what they had seen from him so far, staying out of trouble was probably setting the bar a little too high.

She stopped just inside the door to watch him interact with his other team. The misfits of the Nerd Herd probably wouldn't get anything at all done if not for Chuck. They naturally followed him even though they didn't seem to respect anyone. God bless Anna for saying she could cover whatever it is they were working on to give them a few extra minutes over lunch.

Chuck already pretty much ran the store. Harry Tang was just a nuisance - and Sarah was in wonder of Chuck's patience in dealing with the pompous ass - but "Big" Mike Tucker's treatment of Chuck tested _her_ patience. If this assistant manager thing was anything more than a formality she would never be able to take him seriously.

.

* * *

.

A few minutes later they were sitting together at the patio tables of the Weinerlicious looking to all the world like an infatuated couple - a boyfriend visiting his girlfriend at work while she performs the mundane task of loading napkin dispensers.

He was clearly more than a little bit worried and she decided to set aside any discussions about how much they were and were not allowed to touch or kiss each other. It was a dangerous topic and she still saw no good way to address the finer points such as - when they deliberately crossed that line - whether either of them were allowed to enjoy it.

She continued to be amazed at how comfortable it is to just sit and chat with him. Admittedly, the topic is equally unconventional but a more comfortable one for her. Cover names. False identities. Deception and lies. "The idea with a cover is to keep it as simple as possible without revealing true personal detail." she said. "Any thoughts on a name?"

She had a few in mind for him because based on how frequently such things were overheard in discussions with Morgan or his other co-workers she had assumed he would want to use Han Solo or Jean-Luc Picard or some mash up of any number of equally geeky choices. But she had hated some of the names chosen for her in the past and figured she would give him a chance.

She was pleasantly surprised by his almost immediate answer. "Charles Carmichael?" He perked up a bit when she didn't object and he continued. "Simple, dignified..."

Keeping the name 'Charles' will reduce the likelihood of him getting tripped up. It's not bad and she starts to tell him so. "Easy to remember and not far off..."

But he cut her off with more about the non-existent Charles Carmichael "...Graduated with honors from Stanford, runs a hugely successful software company, semi-retired and is considering entering America's Cup."

Well that was...specific. She hadn't expected a back story and the vision of him as he had described made her smile. She could see it. Except maybe the sailing part. But if this was some pickup identity he had used in bars - besides being hugely disappointed in him - she couldn't allow it. "You've done this before?" she asked. His response was unusually cryptic.

"Let's just say, ah, Mr. Carmichael and I share a small kinship."

She was surprised that she suddenly couldn't read Chuck at all. But she needed to know whether this identity was viable so she probed further. "How's that?"

Chuck hesitated a moment and let out a small sigh before telling her the story. "When I first entered Stanford, it's kind of where I envisioned myself being by now...except for the sailing part. I don't really know where that came from, but he's where most of my class already is."

"So, what happened?" Sarah had been so preoccupied with learning about Chuck's current day-to-day activities and establishing their cover that she hadn't had an opportunity to revisit his background especially why he had dropped out of his University studies in his final semester. She had assumed that the same funk about his college girlfriend - the one that Morgan said Bryce 'stole' - was the driving reason.

"Well, my life took a little detour senior year when our old friend Bryce Larkin discovered stolen tests under my bed and was kind enough to alert administration."

Expelled. Not a drop out - expelled. That's what he was trying to say. Her first reaction was to just blindly take his side. It was unfair to test her perceptions of him but she had to know whether she had somehow misread him completely.

"Did you steal the tests?"

"I thought it was kind of implied that I'm a decent person." True. Very true. But not an answer.

"Well, we all make mistakes." She didn't know what transpired between Chuck and Bryce but Chuck was a decent person. It was hard to accept someone being so pure hearted. But if she were right about Chuck there must be more to the story because Bryce was no stranger to rule bending. She wondered why Bryce hadn't asked the same questions that she was asking and helped his friend determine where those tests had really come from.

"And I've made plenty; that just wasn't one of them. But, hey, then Bryce sent me a whole database of government secrets that are now locked in my brain, keeping me in a constant state of fear, danger, and anxiety, sooo...I'd say we're even."

Here she had been worried about how best to kiss him and forgotten that he had been thrust into this world. If it weren't so sad, it would be almost funny to her that 'fear, danger and anxiety' so accurately described her feelings about being near him - interacting, revealing too much, touching and, yes, potentially kissing him - while, for Chuck, they described concerns for his actual safety. On top of that, Bryce is clearly a hot button for Chuck and she doesn't want to continue to pick at that scab lest she open herself up to questions about her...partnership...with Chuck's former friend. So she steered the conversation back to tonight's mission.

"Don't worry about tonight. No reason to be nervous, I'm not gonna leave your side." she said as she reached out to take both his hands in hers in an attempt to calm him; all thoughts about what was and was not permitted forgotten for the moment. It was foolish to make such a promise but that she could offer that reassurance and have it mean something to another person wasswitch the risk. That his touch seems to have a reassuring affect on her as well was beside the point.

"Me? Nervous? C'mon, never." Chuck flashed that cheeky smile that would be cocky if not for the obvious symptoms of his anxiety for which he was trying to compensate.

"Your hand is a little moist." It was more than a little amusing to Sarah that this man who had no qualms about running headlong into dangerous situations when thrown into them unexpectedly suffered so much self doubt and panic when given too much time to think about those same situations.

"It does that when I'm freaking out." he semi-jokingly replied.

Sarah was pleased that it was something within her other than her training that spurred her to offer up something as simple as a touch and a smile to reassure him.

.

* * *

.

As soon as she was able, Sarah reviewed the most current version of Chuck's dossier. She didn't know why she didn't know any of this before. Her initial intel on Chuck hadn't been as detailed as she would have liked and she had been too preoccupied with daily intel reports and the new realities of her situation to go back and fill in the details.

There was an attempt to cobble together a picture of his personal life but an absence of credit card transactions made it difficult. There were a few phone calls over the past five years to women not currently part of his social circle and the lack of many calls to the same numbers indicated that his comments about second dates had been true.

Why couldn't they see what she saw? She didn't know whether to feel sorrier for Chuck or the handful of women who clearly never knew what they could have had...Chuck, she decided. Definitely Chuck. To hell with those other women.

There wasn't much about Chuck's college girlfriend either and it seemed unnecessary to request additional information. The focus of the file was on Chuck himself and it was professionally irrelevant but personally disappointing that no photograph of his former girlfriend at Stanford was included. Specifically requesting such a thing might be taken the wrong way.

Jill Roberts had done well for herself academically and professionally, having recently completed her doctorate, already published in a few very niche academic publications and securing a research position at a prominent pharmaceutical research company. It seemed her personal life was similar to Chuck's with no known boyfriend much less husband or children. It seemed she threw herself into academia and her research and never looked back.

She had learned at dinner with Chuck's family that Bryce and Jill had been involved and now wondered whether it had been before or after Chuck's expulsion. Could the whole sordid mess have been over a girl?

Chuck's academic record was enlightening. They had told her he was bright but an underachiever. She looked again at the university transcript in front of her. It shouldn't have surprised her but somehow it did to see it all laid out neatly on a single sheet of paper.

He wasn't bright, he was brilliant. Test scores in the 99th percentile and nothing but A's in his engineering courses and mostly A's in his general studies courses with all but one exception no lower than a B. The lone, glaring exception was a D in a required general studies course in his sophomore year. She would have to find out more about the story behind that one some day. Otherwise, exceptional performance held true until his final semester.

He had needed just twelve credit hours to graduate. Four courses. But he was taking six courses in his final semester that added up to eighteen credit hours. When most students would be slacking off waiting for graduation day he had opted to take two extra graduate level electrical engineering courses to fill his time. From what she had observed of Chuck, he probably thought they were fun.

But there in the right hand column where his final A's should have been were the six identical notations she had to look up in the legend. A damning little "NP" repeated six times next to each course description.

_Not Passed_. They didn't tell the whole story. Not even close.

She had looked up the Honor Code policy and was surprised to find that it wasn't nearly as strict as she expected. In fact, it pretty much boiled down to the 'people make mistakes' approach she herself had voiced and allowed for progressive discipline rather than outright dismissal. Dismissal wasn't even mentioned. There must have been even more to that part of the story as well.

She felt a strange combination of anger at Bryce and compassion for Chuck. Anger at Bryce for derailing a promising young life without giving his friend a chance to explain. Without investigating what was really going on. Of course, whatever his reasons, Bryce would have thought that he was right. And once he thought he was right nothing could make him deviate from his course. But even with her natural suspicion of people Sarah had known Chuck less than a month and found the allegations unbelievable.

As his best friend (other than Morgan she supposed) Bryce should have tried harder and she considered his lack of faith in Chuck to be yet another act to add to his list of betrayals. She wasn't sure when Bryce had been recruited but maybe this was the first evidence of Bryce separating himself from his former life and training himself to distrust everyone. She hoped that being exposed to this life never made Chuck lose his trusting nature and enduring faith in people. Somehow both had seemed to survive Bryce's betrayals. The earlier ones and his most recent one.

But the stronger reaction was compassion. And regret that Chuck Bartowski never got a chance to become the man he should be. Bryce had crushed his academic career and both he and Jill had crushed his heart. She had wondered when she was first briefed on Chuck why he hadn't recovered from such old hurts but now supposed it was all such a sweet, kind-hearted young man could take.

The only tangible evidence of why Chuck never became Charles Carmichael was six little NP's on an official looking piece of paper.

A paper with no additional codes or notations to explain how two people could betray him so completely and someone who called him a friend could become so jaded so fast that he wouldn't give Chuck an opportunity to preserve a promising future.

.

* * *

.

024: It Takes Two

.

Weinerlicious, Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; Sun Oct 7, 2007 8:45 am

.

Sarah Walker was angry about a great many things.

She and anger were no strangers to one another but, actually, she found that a lot of unfamiliar emotions were currently masquerading as anger.

She often got angry with Casey for the way he relentlessly teased Chuck. Even if she suspected a thread of good-natured hazing in the NSA agent and Marine. She recalled Casey's proposal that they adopt a carrot and stick approach to try to keep Chuck from running headlong into dangerous situations. She hadn't considered it a serious offer at the time but if it had been Casey had definitely embraced the harsher of the two. She suspected that was because her approach was even softer than he had expected.

Although she wasn't trying to seduce Chuck per se she did enjoy the occasional opportunity to show him some genuine affection and had thought such an opportunity might arise while attending the art auction last night. A few mostly chaste kisses and a comforting touch here or there were all textbook examples of selling a cover and working a dance floor offered many less innocent possibilities.

If she _were_ trying to seduce him she could also say they were textbook examples of developing familiarity with one another or even forging a bond. Maybe it was an inherent awareness of those objectives - what such actions meant psychologically - that explained the thrill she felt on the rare occasions where Chuck had innocently initiated a friendly touch. Maybe a real kiss wasn't hopeless despite his supposedly chronic aversion to PDA. Another thing Casey enjoyed teasing him about.

Maybe it was just a byproduct of being the carrot - of projecting compassion - that she became so easily irritated when Casey seemed to revel in his role as the stick.

But Casey tricking Chuck into thinking he needed to know how to tango for this mission? Well, maybe that was actually pretty fucking funny.

It had been hilarious in the car when Casey couldn't hold his poker face any longer and Chuck let his embarrassment at falling for what he called 'spy humor' show.

The problem was that Casey's clever little joke had put the idea in her head. Then as they stepped out of the car upon reaching the Wilshire Grand, Chuck had quietly confided that he had, in fact, learned to tango for the mission. He had simply said he "didn't want to embarrass her".

Just like having to remind Chuck to stop saying he was a spy out loud was much like the man himself - occasionally frustrating but irresistibly endearing even at those times - she felt an overwhelming burst of affection for Chuck upon learning that he had made that effort. Regardless of the true reasons for his aversion to PDA, she knew it wasn't that he had some burning desire to show off. She suspected that it was far more likely to ensure that he wouldn't have to watch her dance such a dance with someone else in order to survey the room.

And that thought did raise some genuine anger at both herself and the MI6 Agents at the auction. It always rankled when foreign agents - even those from closely allied nations - interfered with her ops much less on American soil. Considering that the nature of this assignment could put her in constant violation of multiple sections of the Executive Order governing US Intelligence Activities, it was her first assignment where such a degree of interference was even possible.

General Beckman and Director Graham had both given her and Casey, separately and together, their assurances that both agents had special Presidential exemption for 'actions taken in protecting the intelligence asset known as The Intersect'. They were supposed to be protecting him while he provided insights into their intel that no one else could. But even though LA was a big city they hadn't expected trouble to come to their doorstep.

Actually _acting_ on the intelligence Chuck provided domestically was a grey area.

When she looked back on the events of the evening, Sarah realized how Chuck may have felt after she left him to cozy up to the man they initially believed to be La Ciudad. Her ability to control most any man didn't come as naturally as most thought. It had been the most difficult and personally demanding skill she had mastered. Despite a childhood spent training to be a con artist and the good looks the CIA had revealed she had never really dated and wasn't terribly comfortable interacting with the opposite sex under any circumstances. Despite the outer shell the CIA had created for Sarah Walker in all her guises, the confidencegage exuded was just as manufactured.

Even flirting with someone she suspected to be an enemy still made her a little queasy - she had just learned to hide it well. Chuck, however, had been forced to watch as she attempted to charm the man who turned out to be a foreign agent on high alert.

She didn't know if her failure had anything to do with the fact that Chuck was watching or if it was her preferred explanation that she had failed because she simply didn't know enough about her target: the MI6 Agent whose mere presence made her break her promise - a promise she never should have made - to stay by Chuck's side as she had indicated she would.

She was angry at herself for making that promise and angry at herself for breaking it. She knew better than to make promises, or at least knew better than to make promises that she had something resembling any intention of keeping. She had made all sorts of promises to marks or any number of other people while undercover but that was when she was some other person. Some role she was playing.

She herself had no intention of being around for the next scene where she fulfilled those promises. If she had to, she renegotiated with some lesser degree of physical affection. She had learned to separate herself from such things and it meant nothing to her, it was just an act - no worse than a movie scene - performed because she had not yet achieved her objective and needed more time. And such things allayed suspicion enough to keep her safe for a few hours more and bought that time with some other promise that she had no intention of keeping.

It was a chain of lies that always ended in a broken promise. Any promises that happened to be partly fulfilled along the way were just part of the destined-to-be-broken chain.

A promise from Sarah to Chuck felt different. She didn't want to see him crestfallen at the end of such a chain. Didn't want him to see the truth of her lies. Didn't want him to come to regard her as completely untrustworthy. As someone who made meaningless promises. As someone for whom a kiss or a touch meant nothing even if she had to say so to protect the cover, protect him from anyone seeing through the cover and protect herself from becoming lost in the version of Sarah Walker who wanted what she wanted.

There was so much she couldn't say just because, if he ever got wind of it, Graham would interpret such things as being unsuited to the job. Part of watching over a human intelligence asset like Chuck was the exit strategy. And one exit strategy required a willingness to ensure that asset was eliminated rather than allow an enemy to take him and all the secrets he held.

If she were to give away too much - if she were deemed unwilling to take such a shot - they would replace her with someone who would. And she told herself maybe she would...if a situation arose where Chuck was obviously facing excruciating torture before dying anyway...

But she found she couldn't even hold such a thought in her head. And she was angry because if she couldn't sell it to herself, she'd never be able to convince Graham.

She was angry at Casey for telling her later about Chuck drinking himself silly - mocking his 'shaken AND stirred' martini orders (but deliberately failing to mention that he had instead fed him ginger ale with a maraschino cherry) - after she approached the agent Chuck had originally identified as their target.

Yes, she had promised to stay by Chuck's side and had ended up leaving him at the mercy of La Ciudad but it was the way Casey described it as 'his prom date trading up for a better looking guy' that made her angry. She knew how Chuck looked at her and despite her stated intentions of not using his emotions against him she often felt she was doing exactly that.

She couldn't figure Casey out. It was as though he was torn between trying to shame her into maintaining a professional detachment - something she was determined to do anyway - and pushing the two of them together. Almost daring her to make some sort of a move on Chuck or to encourage him to make a move on her.

She couldn't tell if he was testing her in some way, trying to get her to say or do something that could be used against her, thought it was a crutch that all female agents relied on or simply playing Cupid for his own amusement. It was maddening. She would confront him on it but that would only be interpreted as evidence supporting whatever theory he was testing. And maybe her anger at Casey had more to do with the fact that she didn't understand her own motivations any better than she understood his.

But she was surprised that most of her anger was focused on the fact that Malena...La Ciudad...whatever you wanted to call the Argentinian bitch of an arms dealer...had stolen her tango with Chuck from her.

Sure, Casey's suggestion to learn the tango was made in jest but since Chuck had made the effort to learn it she had assumed he had done so in hopes of dancing it with her. She had hoped they would find an excuse to dance later as the party went on. Instead she and Casey had ended up in a Mexican standoff with MI6 while Chuck danced with the gorgeous woman who turned out to be La Ciudad.

None of the agents from either nation had witnessed it but the room was still buzzing about the tango the two had danced when they later passed through trying to find Chuck. Apparently, he had put quite a lot of effort into preparing for tonight.

For her.

But he apparently didn't have any problem with an intimate dance with another beautiful woman before realizing she was their target. Something she lumped in with PDA.

She had been too distracted by the dangerous situation they had left Chuck in to think about it much last night. But now, with the mindless habitual routine of the pre-opening checklist of the Weinerlicious pressing down on her, she let her mind wander to what that dance might have been like.

Since she had met him, she had speculated on how it would feel to dance with Chuck. How their bodies would fit together. But her mind was only able to picture Charles Carmichael - PDA aversion erased by multiple shaken AND stirred martinis - dancing seductively with the statuesque beauty seen escaping in the security footage.

Had they danced a more modern tango, close together at the hips, grinding into each other? Or a more traditional Argentinian tango, close together at the chest?

As part of his flash, Chuck had identified Malena as Argentinian so she settled on that image. The bitch pressing and rubbing her chest into his at every opportunity and smiling up at him as she did so the way she should have been...

Sarah threw the towel in her hand down on the counter. She removed her apron and it followed the towel. She quickly put together a bag of their nearly edible breakfast offerings and coffee she had brewed herself that was far better than the swill Scooter made. She risked leaving the deep fryer on, locked the door behind her and began walking toward the Buy More knowing Chuck had been working all night and was likely in need of food.

They had gotten so wrapped up in post-mission clean up, debriefings and escorting the MI6 agents to their embassy that Sarah hadn't had an opportunity to speak with Chuck. She knew he had come back to the Buy More, dejected by any number of failures last night, and worked on some repairs all night. She and Casey had checked on him but not disturbed him.

She was determined to tell him how well he had done. Bring him the least unappetizing breakfast offering from the Weinerlicious and tell him how much she appreciated the fact that he learned that dance for her. Maybe it would be enough for him to offer to show her what he had learned if the opportunity ever arose again. Maybe a cover date involving dancing could even be arranged.

Sarah was partly lost in envisioning those scenarios playing out when she passed a strikingly beautiful delivery girl wearing a black ball cap and carrying a long white box - a delivery girl with a telltale scar on her neck exactly as Chuck had described it.

Sarah ducked behind a delivery van and quickly called to warn Casey to make sure he kept Chuck safe. Then she turned her attention back to see the delivery girl climbing the service ladder to the roof of the Weinerlicious and the contents of the package became clear to her.

She suddenly had a much more productive and fulfilling way to manage her anger than trying to sort out what was and was not real about the relationship between Sarah Walker and Chuck Bartowski.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N: The oblique reference to _The Avengers_ comes from a reviewer's comment about the Sarah of this story reminding them of Natasha Romanov. I was watching _The Avengers_ recently (yes, again) and the "Love is for children" line stood out to me in the context of Sarah contemplating what she would do if certain orders were issued at this early stage. Sarah shares many traits with The Black Widow - apparently denial is one of them. (I mean c'mon, Clintasha FTW!)

Regarding the perils of excessive research: There is a single frame during a flash in 'Alma Mater' that portrays Chuck as a mediocre student. The transcript they present is more typical of a mechanical engineering curriculum than electrical and he would likely have lost any scholarship he might have had after his sophomore year. I feel comfortable disregarding what appears to be something that a PA threw together for a single frame of canon and taking some liberties with Chuck's academic record.

'Tango' should have been easy to cover but I found myself exploring many tangents. Sarah is now acutely aware of the indefinite nature of this assignment. She is truly a 'handler' now. And - while I don't agree with certain representations of the handler/asset dynamic - in this Sarah-verse there are expectations of a detached and unquestioning execution of orders.

Being a cover girlfriend could take a skeevy turn with a less stand-up guy. I know people love a good 'secret relationship' story but I have my reasons for not going that route. Therefore, the role of PDA in their cover relationship actually became a significant point. Sarah may not have encountered a good enough reason to do 'those' assignments but she still isn't above using those skills to manipulate most men.

So this seems like as good a place as any to discuss what those skills are really for and what might happen when duty and desire conflict. Or start to look uncomfortably similar. When a kiss isn't _just_ a kiss. That means the dreaded IIEP and that means a return to her training. Next installment takes a break from canon events and will be the first half of a flashback arc that gets into some of those uncomfortable elements I mentioned in the preamble but have mostly dodged thus far. Ye be warned.


	10. X: Chrysalis

...wherein an earlier incarnation of Sarah Walker is further honed from skilled recruit to master spy and begins to learn some ugly truths of her new profession...

Canon Reference: None. First half of a non-canon flashback arc (to be concluded in the next installment before returning to canon). Watch the dates and keep in mind that 'Stacy' is almost / barely nineteen years old throughout.

Content: Two chapters; non-canon flashbacks picking up where Chapter 3 left off (reminder: a woman named Stacy Mills arrives at 'The Facility'); longer than I would have liked or expected and seemingly gratuitous but this side trip has it's purpose(s); the first of the two chapters is super sized (12K) presented in ten(!) sections of varying length while the second is medium length (around 3,400 words in six sections)

A/N: Happy Labor / Labour Day to all!

Sorry to those who don't get to use this story as an excuse to hide in the break room or to pretend you're answering important emails during boring meetings. (Not that I ever do anything of the sort...) You can always save it to read tomorrow if that is your modus operandi. For those not in the US / Canada, we celebrate (i.e., get a free pass from work on) Labor / Labour Day on the first Monday in September whereas much of the rest of the world observes a similar holiday on various earlier dates in the year. And for the record, even though I use the slightly more economical, far less elegant American versions, I secretly prefer and angered my grade-school teachers to no end with the British / Canadian spellings of 'u'-words (labour, colour, favourite...). They're fancier.

Warnings Revisited (aka Cage Match with a Dead Horse): I had a long, preachy-yet-simultaneously-apologetic note all teed up here but then I remembered my initial warnings closing by saying "I will let the story tell the story". So simply be aware that this installment and part of the next will cover seduction training / IIEP before circling back to canon. I have some strong opinions about the concept in general but equally strong and somewhat contradictory opinions on the usage of it in spy fiction (the tropes of which CHUCK leverages heavily) that I hope I can effectively convey.

Trigger warnings: The important thing is that this installment contains non-explicit (and even this compromise feels a bit like minimizing a horrible thing) but still potentially unsettling **reference to a rape, a pattern of rape and more than one attempted rape**. Its like medieval literature. I wasn't deliberately trying to put all the awful in one place but here we are. For those without strong aversions its probably not anywhere near as bad as I'm making it out to be. Miraculously, still T-rated. Multiple characters will offer their own takes on seduction training and its preferred role on missions and really, really horrible people.

In case you don't want to miss anything: As a human being, I personally dislike the entire concept behind these chapters but feel it and it's fallout are necessary to lay a foundation and tell the story I am telling. Like many other elements (such as adherence to canon, which IMO actually _requires_ that this be addressed) it is a challenge to myself and, if it is to be done at all, I have to participate. You do not. For those who choose to opt out, I will provide a brief summary of key events at the beginning of the next installment. Things will lighten up a bit after the next several installments.

Some may also find it troubling that I'm still laying foundations.

Also, the structure got really weird with a personal pet-peeve, flashbacks within flashbacks (actually, I pulled a triple! Flashbacks cubed! With a drug trip of sorts - bonus!), but it seemed the cleanest, most expedient way and I think it works. My apologies if not. There is an attempt at writing a particular dialect so any misspellings between these thingies (") is _probably_ intentional.

And - just for one loyal reader - this chapter actually does contain a 'deliberate barn'. (Actually, I knew that it would at the time of the first accidental 'deliberate barn' which made it even funnier to me.)

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: No ownership of or rights to CHUCK is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership of or rights to _Alice in Wonderland, The Hunger Games, The Blues Brothers, Gattaca_, popular soft drinks, any Tom Clancy novel, or the mother of all Pixar Easter Eggs is asserted or implied. No ownership of or rights to the song referenced by Tears for Fears is asserted or implied. (I favor the original but the Lorde version is pretty awesome too, as is the version by a pop-punk / riot grrl band with one of the best names evah: Care Bears on Fire...)

.

* * *

Part X: Chrysalis

* * *

.

025: Down The Rabbit Hole

.

* * *

"Welcome to your life..."

\- Tears for Fears, _Everybody Wants to Rule the World_

* * *

.

The Facility - Classified Secondary Training Site

Near Camp Peary, York County, VA; Sat Apr 14, 2001 5:55 pm

.

Stacy Mills knew they had reached their destination only when the car stopped, the engine shut off and she heard the door locks disengage. She heard the trunk open and decided to check her own door handle. It opened freely and she extricated herself from the rear seat of the Town Car with windows darker from the inside than they were from the outside and a completely opaque partition between the passenger's and driver's cabins. She stepped out into a relatively cool spring evening and looked around at the eight old farm buildings scattered about the large open space.

Her driver had stopped the car, removed her luggage from the trunk and then simply stood at parade rest by the front passenger-side door facing a building that appeared to be nothing more than an old, weathered barn over a hundred yards away. She took the hint and moved to join the barrel-chested man and as she did the sun caught something metallic in the upper window of one of the buildings to her right. She looked around and was certain she saw a tiny movement in another building to her left. A window was open in another building behind her.

She was standing in a kill zone.

"Stop looking." the driver offered. "And don't run. You won't get ten feet."

Her heart was racing but she turned to face where her driver was looking and saw a figure emerge from the barn.

The man walking toward them seemed a match for the barn, slightly built with khaki overalls over a red and black checked shirt and a black flap ear cap. He walked with a pronounced limp, favoring his right leg, and his bushy, grey mustache hid the expression of his mouth as well as the brim of his hat hid that of his eyes.

He carried what appeared to be a modified Mossberg 930 at the ready in front of him. It had been roughed up a bit to match his overall look but the difference between it and the double-barreled breech loader the stereotype demanded was enough of an incongruity to make you notice that this man was not the hayseed he was attempting to portray. When he stopped four feet in front of them it was clear there was nothing casual or laid-back about this man especially the piercing alertness of his eyes.

"Harrison." he acknowledged the driver. Whether this was a first or last name was unclear but his gaze had not left the woman next to the driver until after he said it.

"Caretaker." he acknowledged back. "Got another one for you."

"Jesus." said the man with the shotgun as he glanced back at the female recruit briefly then looked back to her driver. "They keep gettin' younger and younger. Or I keep gettin' older. Stay fer a spell?"

"You're definitely getting older - more so than the rest of us - but I can't. Rain check?"

"Sure jus' drop in anytime. With 48 hours advance notice an' the proper orders, o'course."

Harrison scoffed at that but offered a tell-tale paper bag to Caretaker who cradled his shotgun between his armpit and wrist as he rolled the bag tightly against the bottle inside and tucked both into his back pocket. As he did so his shirt moved unnaturally and Stacy saw light body armor underneath. With a closer look at his flap-eared hat she realized it concealed a tactical radio. At least she knew no one would act without this man's order.

"Yer a good man Harrison." Caretaker said in return for his package before addressing the blonde woman. "Mills?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." It seemed the appropriate answer but he visibly reacted with a half-snarl, half-cringe.

"Sure you are." he acknowledged cryptically, then turning to her driver. "Better get her settled. See you Harrison."

Harrison turned to recruit Stacy Mills and looked at her properly for the first time with an indecipherable expression most closely resembling pity. "Good luck, Miss."

"Umm...thanks?"

The man whose first or last name may or may not have been Harrison nodded to her, rounded the Town Car and got back in, turned ninety degrees in reverse and then the remaining ninety degrees to return in the direction from which he came leaving a faint cloud of dust in his wake.

"You'll have to forgive Harrison..." she turned to see the man that Harrison had referred to simply as 'Caretaker' and looked down to see the barrel of his shotgun pointed directly at her stomach "...not much of a talker, that one. D'you know why yer here?"

"I'm...some sort of deep cover training?"

"And yer up for that?" his expression was hard as stone and lacked any of the pity Harrison had shown.

It kind of pissed her off so she answered somewhat indignantly "I've been training my ass off for almost three years. It's about time I did something with it."

"Hmm." He harumphed and took a moment to scrutinize her closely before simultaneously softening his expression and taking two steps backward while keeping his shotgun trained on her midsection. He was still close enough that - depending upon what it was loaded with - one shot would pretty much cut her in half easily but he had moved out of hand-to-hand range.

"What?" she asked in response to his strange change in posture as he reassessed her probable age and threat level.

"Nuthin'. Made some unfair assumptions is all. Ya see...some that come here, this is the first training - first _real_ training - they get. Grab yer bags and head for that barn. I'll be right behind you."

She did as instructed but an unknown man with a shotgun behind her was making her uncomfortable. "Want to tell me why I'm being walked in here at gunpoint?"

"Sorry." She could almost hear the indifference of an unseen shrug. "Like I said, unfair 'sumptions. I don't know where you come from. And I don't wanna know. Some don't know what they're gettin' into until they're sent here. Some of 'em freak out. You say yer trained so prolly none of that but then again...yer trained. So I gotta be careful if you do freak out. Its a circle I don't care to follow huntin' for its start or end. Maybe yer a true believer. Gonna save the world. Maybe yer just another thrill junkie. Maybe you got yerself press ganged into being here. Maybe you jus' got nowhere else to go..."

When they reached the regular-sized access door in the right door of the barn's two large outer doors he nodded toward it and she opened it as indicated and stepped through. As she did so she considered that of the multiple choice motivations he proposed for her all were true to one degree or another.

Caretaker followed and continued. "...I seen all kinds step through that hatch. But I don't make those calls. I just get you checked in. And if you run..." he nodded back to the door and now that her eyes had adjusted to the light from the four exposed bulb lamps hanging down the length of the center rafter she saw the M40 sniper rifle next leaning against the wall just inside the door "...I bring you back. One way or t'other. That's what I do here when I'm not playin' doorman. A few recruits get a hall pass and get to go out to learn the long shot. Some hall passes for other stuff too, 'specially for the ones pretty as you. If yer one of Graham's with that much training we'll prolly see each other again."

Something about this whole interaction confused her as he closed up the barn and gestured for her to follow him toward the back. "Wait a minute. Don't you _know_ my training? Have a file on me or something?"

"Nope. Don't know. Don't wanna know. That's the whole point of this place. No files since you an' me an' e'ryone else here - well, we _ain't_ here. Yer a blank slate as far as anyone here is concerned. You'll get asked about what you can and cant do - yet. We'll set your training and we'll go from there. Don't sandbag, we'll know. Don't exaggerate... that would be bad."

"What if I'm not even Stacy Mills?"

"Well, if that's the case, yer pretty much fucked. But I'm pretty sure yer _not_ Stacy Mills. And Stacy Mills isn't gonna be the woman walking out of this facility either. People go in, agents come out. You jus' make sure you do what you gotta do so you walk outta this...facility. Shit, now I'm sayin' it. Anyway, got anything in that bag yer gonna need?"

"Well, clothes, toothbrush, makeup..."

"Anything personal? Irreplaceable? Pichers? Mementos or such? You'll have every practical thing you need waiting for you in your room."

"No...nothing like that." Lydia had been given one photo of a flight training class that had been confiscated and the person who had taken it had received a severe reprimand. Annabelle had to leave all of her belongings in her campus apartment to be cleaned out after her 'death'. Even the foreign language books she had collected and studied years before her first meeting with Deputy Director Graham. Sloan had been a complete fabrication that required very little effort to vanish completely. Stacy was literally born yesterday. And the young woman underneath all of them hadn't bothered with anything resembling a memento in a long, long time.

"Alright then." he reached out a hand, palm up, for her belongings and she handed them over. He opened the door and pulled the chain of a bare light bulb inside and placed her bag and purse in a cubby hole with the number "6" prominently hung over it.

She saw several numbered cubby holes with a variety of luggage in most of them - bags of all types and sizes. Duffle bags, plastic trash bags, regular travel luggage like hers, Louis Vuitton and other designers...all of which she assumed belonged to her fellow residents. Only then did she wonder exactly where she would reside.

"Umm...do I sleep in the barn?"

"In a manner o' speaking." he answered cryptically - secretly impressed that she didn't seem too concerned if that _had_ been the case - and gestured for her to follow him to the last stall.

He swept the hay on the floor away with his foot to reveal a circle in the floor four feet in diameter and stepped toward the outer wall. He pressed his thumb against an undetectable portion of the wall and a small metal door opened. After he bent at the waist to use the retinal scanner inside and entered a code, a seal released on the circle in the floor and after a few moments it began to rise.

It was the top of a large acrylic cylinder, seven feet tall and a little smaller on each side than the outline in the floor had indicated, began to slowly rise out of the floor. A thick circular top was supported by four vertical posts equally spaced at the 45 degree marks. When it fully emerged the quarter of the tube extended outward and spun 90 degrees to allow entry - from the front two supports to one in the rear - and a green light illuminated the inside.

"Thumb print here, please."

She pressed her thumb to the indicated reader and it too illuminated green. She assumed that meant she had been identified as the agent they had been expecting. Or if someone _had_ taken Stacy Mills' place it was that person's thumb that was now required.

"Alright, Mills. Welcome to The Facility. Folks used to call it The Barn for obvious reasons but...well, you'll see. Follow the green lights. After you get through any door with a green light, let it close, find the reader and thumb-in so the system knows you entered and you'll be all good. It'll feel like a prison but it's all meant to keep you deep cover operatives safe. Don't want you seein' each other. You'll meet instructors as needed but we're careful with the other recruits. I get to see everyone because of my sunny disposition."

"And because you'll drop them if they run."

"Well there's that. I know I wouldn't want someone I hadn't looked in the eye taking me out. Seems fittin'. But we ain't all bad." and he held up a cartridge roughly the size of a shotgun shell but with an electric blue casing and twenty or so needle-like points at the tip.

"Tranqs?"

"Yep. You only come here if someone's got a use for you. And we don't waste people with uses lightly. But I'm afraid yer goin' underground one way or t'other. And yer gonna be there for a while. Most are out in six months or so. If ya been wond'rin what you signed up for...this is it."

It was clear she was meant to step into this tube. She did so reluctantly and the door closed behind her. She turned to face the man called 'Caretaker'. She could still hear him faintly as she placed her hands on both sides of the tube as it began to descend.

"You'll be alright. Just keep your head down and do what yer told. And don't freak out." He offered her a surprisingly kind smile as he disappeared out of view and the elevator, for lack of a better term, was surrounded on all sides by unforgiving concrete with a rail on either side roughly where her hands were placed that had apparently engaged the top and bottom once they were below the surface.

There was a vent in the ceiling but she didn't feel any air flow or see where any air could conceivably come from. It was like being buried alive - or swallowed by a whale - and her breathing became slightly erratic as she realized she had no idea how long it would be before her crypt reopened.

Or if it ever would.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Underground; Sat Apr 14, 2001 6:20 pm

.

The thirty-foot descent took less than a minute but, when the circle around her feet became more brightly illuminated as more and more of the elevator encroached into the stark white hallway, she prayed this was her destination and she would be able to exit on this level.

The elevator stopped once its floor was level with the floor outside and she slipped through the opening while the door was still opening. Sure enough, at the end of the short hallway was a door with a green light illuminated in the ceiling above it. There was a thick binder labelled 'Recruit Handbook' on a shelf in the wall. Assuming the elevator counted as a door she pressed her thumb to the pad above the shelf. As she did so she thought a tag with the words 'Read Me' would have completed the visual. Out of curiosity, she flipped it open to one of the first pages and glanced over it.

_...Potential clandestine and deep cover agents are not to be permitted contact with one another within this Facility to preserve future operational integrity... All training personnel with access to the Facility are heavily vetted and monitored to reduce such risks... for the duration of your stay in this Facility, personal interactions will be kept to a minimum... Read the remainder of this handbook to familiarize yourself with the procedures and practices required of all personnel within this Facility..._

In her peripheral vision she saw the green light over the door began to flash. She glanced around and when she looked up she saw vents like the one inside the elevator spaced at regular intervals along the hallway. Red indicator lights illuminated on the ones above her with a corresponding click. Then the next pair of vents did the same. Then the next. And she decided it would be prudent to move along.

She didn't want to see what came after a flashing green light. She had the unsettling thought that it wouldn't take much to turn this place into an abattoir.

The door opened up in the middle of another longer hallway. She pressed her thumb to the pad by the door which had illuminated once the door she had entered through latched. Down the hallway to her right she saw another green light begin flashing almost immediately. She followed it quickly and the next was solid green. She kept up her pace for one more turn and found a green light over a door labelled with a number "6".

She barely processed that there was a sign over the door between her room and room number "8" labelled "6-10 showers" as she slipped into what was apparently her home for the foreseeable future and pressed her thumb against the pad next to the door. The word 'Hold' appeared and continued to flash on the top part of the pad as the door closed. She continued to hold her thumb against the pad as the light above the door blinked red three times and she heard an audible click as the word 'Hold' disappeared from the pad.

She had locked herself in and felt both trapped and relieved. The air vents were blowing cool air and at least externally didn't look anything like the contraptions in the ceiling throughout the corridors on her way here.

She pressed her thumb against the pad again and nothing happened as she looked around to see only a simple U-shaped pull handle on her side of the door and no light switches. She looked around to see a full size bed, a small desk and chair, a stainless steel toilet and small sink protruding from the wall and a small wardrobe.

A quick check of the wardrobe revealed grey tees, black tanks, tights, sweatpants and cargo pants, sports bras and utilitarian underwear, socks and shoes - all properly sized - and a bag of basic toiletries. The room was twice as wide as what she would expect of a prison cell but no more inviting. There was a pull-up bar against the wall opposite her bed and what looked like a larger version of an old-fashioned sliding bank teller drawer next to the door.

A screen above the drawer illuminated and displayed a schedule for the remainder of the night. There were instructions for various exercises with notations like 'any number consecutive' and 'at least 50 consecutive'. There was a time for meal delivery and a fifteen minute window for showering after that before lights out. She assumed the overhead lights were centrally controlled but was pleased to find there was a small reading light at the desk that she could control.

She ignored her calisthenics for the moment, turned the desk light on, sat cross-legged on the bed and opened the handbook.

Most everything at The Facility was underground. As the handbook passage she had sneaked a look at earlier had revealed it was intended for small classes of prospective deep cover operatives while limiting their exposure to other recruits. The unwritten reasoning was that the washout rate was high and if washouts were to be permitted to be assigned to other roles they were not allowed to have seen any other recruits who might later depend upon complete anonymity. Even mixing successful recruits was a risk if one were later captured or defected.

The run down buildings visible upon Stacy's arrival appeared to roughly define the footprint of each underground complex but below the first level many of them joined up to form larger areas. They were labelled on the diagram with a letter and number but no indication of their intended purpose.

She had been correct to hurry along at the flashing green lights. They were a thirty second warning before the section occupied by a dawdling recruit was sealed and flooded with knockout gas. There was no indication of what happened next or how many infractions resulted in punishment of some kind. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you were deliberately knocked out here it wouldn't be completely unjustified to wonder if you might never wake.

You would go where you were told when you were told and do what you were told when you got there. This place was designed to ensure compliance and given her welcoming party of impersonal green lights she didn't want to think about what failure to adhere to the rules could mean.

The drawer slid out and almost immediately back in. When it returned there were two bottles of water - even though there was a cup at the sink - and a tray of relatively palatable if bland food covered in shrink wrap on top of a ten page questionnaire covering a variety of skills. The concern that either food or water or even the air she was breathing could be drugged entered her mind but there wasn't much that could be done about that. She extracted the drawer's contents and moved them to the desk while she completed her assigned exercises - sit ups all in one go, full push-ups in two sets and pull ups one and two at a time - before the green light allowed her to exit her room and go next door for her shower time.

When she returned she ate and finished reading through the handbook at her small desk. If she ever had occasion to interact with anyone who knew of it, it would become clear that there was no cleverness associated with the nickname ascribed to this place by those select few who passed through this...Facility.

The word 'Facility' was simply always capitalized and appeared as many as three hundred times in the forty page handbook.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Underground; April/May 2001

.

The first few weeks consisted entirely of increasingly brutal physical conditioning and multiple evaluations. She had met with a conditioning and strength coach who had put her through a few exercises to assess any weak points, alluding to but making no concession for her gender, and taught her how to use any equipment with which she was unfamiliar. Thereafter she reported dutifully to whichever of the small gyms she was assigned.

Physical Training was abbreviated PT on her schedule, wardrobe requirements were assigned and whoever was responsible for her prescribed workouts was clearly a sadist. Some sessions she knew were observed through ever present one-way glass while others were entirely unsupervised. Failure to keep up with self-directed endurance training in those sessions was easily detected by their trainers later in the program.

The glass itself implied observation rooms not present on any diagram of The Facility she had seen which in turn implied a completely unseen network of access points and tunnels. The ever present green lights and other herding mechanisms provided a constant reminder of her vulnerability and she wondered what kinds of safeguards existed on the other side of the glass. If she smashed the glass could she make her way to the surface? Only thoughts of her father's well-being and a complete lack of any destination after accomplishing such a fear kept her from attempting it.

She ran a total of ten miles on a treadmill every day with a pace that was approaching 'acceptable' and abused a heavy bag and lifted weights on alternating days. She was pleased with how quickly she was gaining strength and continued to embrace the athleticism awakened in her prior trainings. She had thought she was in good shape until she had been taught a few basic moves using a kettlebell followed by a prescribed routine building up to sprints of one-armed snatches that occasionally left her puking in the corner.

She used to despise the treadmill but now she looked at it longingly.

During the same period, she had answered questions truthfully about all of the languages that she now spoke and was rewarded with three solid weeks of lengthy twice daily sessions of language assessment in most of those languages. For nearly the first month all she did was train and talk. It seemed unnecessary but her evaluators all had extensive experience in regions where those languages were spoken and offered invaluable small adjustments and regional quirks while evaluating her believability in various cover scenarios.

She self-reported her proficiency with firearms - the only areas she didn't claim 'highly proficient' as her level of capability were long-range and heavy weapons - and self-reported her martial arts proficiency. After practical qualifications with a few disbelieving then incredulous evaluators she had been assigned a recurring block of range time for one firearm of her choosing (a S&amp;W 5906 she had come to favor despite it being heavier than the rest of the 5900 variants), two that the instructors rotated and various assault rifles - also instructors choice.

When she filled out the martial arts questions she had to write on the back of the paper. She had wiped the mat with one of the instructors in her first assessment. She had then been told to limit herself only to the discipline being tested and did it again. It wasn't until later that she realized what a bad idea that might have been but she had been told not to hold back.

It was mid-May, two days after that sparring session, when she had shown up in the designated room for an abbreviated PT session only to find a small room with one single solitary piece of gym equipment. Her nemesis: a 26-ish lb. hunk of iron - a cannonball with a handle - and her goal written on the wall: "200 one-armed snatches; 15 minutes; pause / stop as needed". She quickly calculated in her head that, without stopping, it would be a pace of one every five seconds or so.

She had to start her own timer and resented the stolen few seconds. She had looked for some kind of sensor in the walls or ceiling but someone behind the glass must have been incrementing the counter next to the timer on the wall because any imperfect lift did not count. She was determined not to pause and show them what she was made of. Instead she puked twice and fell to one knee when the timer expired. She sat legs out trying to stretch out her hamstrings and relax her shoulders finding the counter at 172 but determined to finish next time.

It became a weekly torture and the second time her plans were thwarted when the timer was set to count down from 14 minutes instead of 15 and someone had painted a cartoonish demon face on the kettlebell. Just eyes with a sunken brow, triangular jack-o'-lantern teeth and horns extending onto the handle on one side of the bell. The other side had a single word: 'Faster!'.

She looked at the demon staring at her feet and muttered "I hate you".

She wasn't sure if she was talking to the demon-bell or the owner of the laughter from behind the one-way glass. But she gripped the demon-bell by its handle and started the timer - trying and failing for a pace that would meet her goal. She realized at the eight minute mark that she was hopelessly off pace but persisted and, at the eleven minute mark, emptied her stomach. As punishments went for upstaging instructors this was a pretty good-natured one.

She was already highly proficient at many of the topics on her schedule but her proficiency at hand-to-hand combat had definitely not gone unappreciated. After multiple assessments she was assigned several standing blocks of sparring time - some with a thin black mask the wearer could see and breathe through relatively well. When she saw her opponent wearing a similar mask - unlike her assessments with most instructors - she realized she was sparring with other recruits.

She originally thought they wanted her to get beat on and she fought within the prescribed parameters and styles of the session against usually much stronger male opponents beating all soundly and most quickly.

It became clear that her opponents were not nearly as well trained as her, especially the other women. She took extra care with the more timid of them, slowing down to pantomime moves, and encouraging her intended opponents to mirror her demonstration of them. Speaking was forbidden unless it was via a whispered message to an unmasked instructor who relayed the message. She was surprised to find that the sense of satisfaction she felt from learning new things had a parallel sense of satisfaction in teaching them to others. She was more than pleased to see all of her opponents improve significantly.

She assumed it was for the benefit of the less-trained opponents but, when they were dismissed and the evaluators referred to her opponent as 'recruit' and her as 'sensei', she took it for the compliment it was and embraced her status as a pseudo-instructor.

Explicit compliments were rare but this implied one was worth every bit of increasingly grueling PT - even the demon-bell where the timer had been moved to 12 minutes. Her count within that reduced time held relatively steady and the goal seemed no closer than it had the first time.

Even with her successes, she felt like she had a lot to prove and a lot left to learn about how to actually be a spy. She answered a few more questionnaires. This time about technical skills such as electronics and lock-picking. It was clear they really had not been briefed on her prior training. She was expected to go through every topic again and check every box proving her proficiency.

There were other questions about additional weapons where she listed herself as an expert on thrown knives - the highest level of proficiency on their scale. Considering she had not described herself as an expert an any fighting styles word spread quickly. She couldn't know that it was standing room only in the observation room for her demonstration but she also couldn't help but grin and bow afterward to the mirrored glass at the applause of those being deliberately loud enough to be heard though it.

There had also been a questionnaire mixed in with others labelled simply 'IIEP' that she initially thought was some psychological assessment until it ventured into increasingly personal and graphically sexual questions. She opted to simply leave these blank.

Later in the week her monitor was updated with revised schedule for the next week and she scrolled through it for changes. She smiled when she saw no evaluations. There were finally several sessions a week with more interesting names like 'Spycraft' or 'Tactics' and she smiled wider upon seeing an entry for Thursday morning labeled 'Real Shooting - Topside Range'.

She also cringed when she saw a half-hour entry for early afternoon on Tuesday labeled 'Meet and Greet'. The words themselves seemed harmless but she was reminded of the bizarre and insulting questions when she saw the acronym next to them.

'IIEP'

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Woods and Grounds; May 2001

.

The air had never smelled sweeter.

She had lugged two sniper rifles - a modified M24 slung over her shoulder and a massive M82A1M broken down in a hard case - and a loaded pack through the woods following the man she had not seen since he greeted her when she had first arrived. He apparently had some sort of range set up nearby. He was limping ahead of her carrying a third rifle - the M40 she had seen the first day - and a pack full of ammo while she lumbered behind him. She was sweating her ass off but smelling the pine scent in the air, feeling the sun warm her skin in the clearings and the breeze cooling her skin under the shade of the pines she wasn't about to complain.

She had been herded to the same tube she used to enter the Facility and Caretaker had been waiting for her when she emerged at the top. He had traded his ridiculous greeting outfit for combat boots, camo cargo pants, a black t-shirt with USMC emblazoned on its front in yellow letters and an OD green military cap. It was identical to the outfit that had appeared in her wardrobe shortly after her schedule had been updated last week except her shirt was plain and her cap had no insignia. She had been trained to recognize the ranks of military personnel in almost any country and recognized his as that of a gunnery sergeant. That was how she greeted him when she stepped out of the tube.

He had figured he wouldn't have to correct this one and smiled at being properly addressed. Most called him 'Sir' - as she had on her first day not knowing any better at the time - and got the automatic verbal smack for it. She was sharp as a tack and tough as old leather despite her looks. He knew a good one when he saw them.

"Heard you passed your pea-shooter tests, Mills. Since you did alright there thought you might want to try a real weapon. If yer up for a little hike."

She stifled her retort about just doing 'alright' or any of those weapons being anything but a pea-shooter at the smile on his face and the prospect of spending more time outside. "Sounds good to me, gunnery sergeant."

It was more than a little hike with the load she was carrying but they eventually came to long clearing running north-south that probably looked a bit like a golf fairway from above. There were remote controlled targets at varying distances and once she proved she had a basic familiarity with the weapons they had brought with them he assigned a few test shots without any additional instruction. Anything over a thousand yards had been less than impressive but he didn't seem surprised.

He opened the pack she had carried and removed a small cooler. Lunch was a gourmet affair - two bologna sandwiches for each of them with processed American cheese, mayonnaise, mustard and tomatoes. He smiled at her and gave her a choice of beverage. "Since you toted our lunch out here it's ladies choice. I got us both kinds of soda."

Apparently Coke and Mountain Dew were the only two kinds of soda. She hadn't had the sugary beverage in a long time but chose the more familiar one from her childhood and left the toxic yellow one for him which he seemed quite pleased with.

The food in The Facility wasn't particularly good or bad. It was all proper portions and specifically balanced nutritional content and a grand total of four possibilities. She would never have chosen bologna but sitting here in the sun it was heavenly.

They sat in silence until he mumbled through a mouthful of sandwich "The instructors been talkin' 'bout you." She looked surprised to hear that and he continued. "They come up and visit with me sometimes before they head home. I been pushin' to get you a hall pass to come up and play a bit."

"Why's that?"

"Observed some of your training and knew you were ready. And prolly gettin' a little bored. But mostly 'cause yer different. Most yap about their fancy degrees or what a hot shit they are in one way or another. You just go about your business. Don't gripe much. Try to outdo yourself 'stead of worrying about what anyone else might be doing. I like it. Shows backbone. Gumption."

Other recruits. They had actual degrees and had lived actual lives before committing to the Program. She suspected as much and envied them somewhat for all of that but would never let on. She didn't want to share that she _did_ think about how she stacked up against other recruits. She was determined to show that she was just as good - just as worthy - as any of them. And better than most. While they had experienced college life as most would envision it, she had bought proficiencies they would never achieve. All it had cost her in exchange was the last few years of her childhood.

They spent the rest of their lunch covering the basics of the gunnery sergeant's craft. Wind adjustments. Humidity effects. How, after multiple shots, the barrel of a rifle heats up, the metal contracts slightly and the shell is propelled faster than usual. Even the Coriolis effect where the longest of long shots require an adjustment for the rotation of the earth itself.

They continued his instruction as he acted as her spotter and patiently offered minor corrections while reviewing the need for each correction. He rarely had to make the same correction twice. Her hit count on the intermediate targets had doubled over the course of their session and her technique was substantially improved.

"Welp. We're all out of ammo Mills but I think you earned yourself another session next week if you want to try the next set o' targets."

"Hell yeah..." slipped out of her mouth before she corrected "...gunnery sergeant." He chuckled knowing it was as much about getting outside as it was shooting. He had seen more than one recruit crack underground. As they packed up he asked how things were going in her other training sessions.

She talked as they hiked back and mentioned all but one and, although he knew his position on the matter wasn't exactly the company line, he had to ask.

"Meet Peterson yet?"

"Yeah." she said thoughtfully before correcting herself "Umm...yes, gunnery sergeant."

"Oh, drop it. You shoot like a real Marine but I'll let you off the hook anyways. Since we don't have names here just don't use one and I'll stop insulting our intelligence by calling you 'Mills'. I'll bend a few rules but I know the deal on real names. Hows about you jus' call me 'Gunny' and since you ain't got no rank I'll call you 'Recruit' and we'll both know what it really means? Deal?" She agreed and he continued "So, how'd that go?"

Recruit Mills smiled knowing the level of respect and acceptance that had just been offered to her just by telling her to call him 'Gunny'. It was similar to being called Sensei even slightly facetiously in the dojo. Her pride caused her to wonder briefly if any other recruits - the ones with the fancy degrees and more conventional upbringing - were given the same inherent compliment before responding.

"Well, I didn't know what to expect. My schedule just said IIEP and the questionnaire I filled out that was labelled IIEP was pretty...rude...so I left a lot of it blank..."

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; May 2001

.

She arrived promptly at 2:00 pm and thumbed in as the door latched closed. She had entered what turned out to be an unoccupied room turned office in a portion of the Facility not shown on the map in her handbook. The door she passed through had said "Annex" which she supposed accounted for the "A" and room arrows on the walls implied over thirty rooms.

A quick look around showed an attempt to add some sort of personalization. There was a basic low cabinet by the back wall with a matched pair of samurai swords and a few pictures of small groups of various military personnel hung on the wall. There were a few books on the shelves and several packing boxes behind the desk. Besides the desk chair the only seat in the room was an apartment sized leather couch.

As she sat to wait the door opened and the man who entered apologized for being late. "Sorry. Let me just..." and he pocketed an access card of some kind and thumbed-in as she had and the door latched. "Good. Just the two of us for a bit then. Mills was it?"

She had stood back up and stood with her hands folded in front of her and just nodded in response, not sure what to expect but noticing the charming smile he flashed and beginning to appreciate the fact that she was in an isolated and unfamiliar area of the Facility. He was tall and well built. Sort of ruggedly handsome but not really her cup of tea with cropped black hair and dark brown, almost-black eyes. He moved to the low cabinet and, after searching through the cabinets with a heavy sniff as though he had a cold, he stood and lit a small tea light candle underneath a small copper bowl and the room filled with a thick, spicy scent.

"Right. Still airing this place out and my allergies are killing me. I'm just getting settled but I wanted to have a chat with all of my recruits to see what we're working with."

He took his time as he gestured to the couch and she retook her seat. He continued to take his time as he retrieved a sheaf of papers from a desk drawer before joining her on the couch.

_My recruits._ He had been perfectly pleasant thus far and she didn't know why but she was already uncomfortable with him. She felt a minor itching sensation in her arms that alternated between the feel of crawling spiders and goosebumps. She didn't like the way he grinned when she shifted to move a little further from him. It was as though her mild discomfort amused him.

"So Stacy...do you mind if I call you Stacy?" She just shook her head slightly while she tried to figure this guy out. "My name is Agent Peterson. But you can call me Jason in here."

His wolffish grin only reminded her that the door was secured until their session was over. Twenty four minutes to go.

"So, IIEP?" she prompted with a slight clearing of her throat. The acronym had been the only warning she had been given about what she might be walking into today.

"Infiltration and Inducement of Enemy Personnel." he offered, clearly pleased to be launching into a well-rehearsed monologue. "Do you know which of those words is most important Stacy?"

There was still something about this conversation that was making her feel a little hazy and more than a little frightened.

"Inducement. You and I are going to be working on getting people who should be suspicious of you to do whatever you want them to do."

"Like running cons on people?" she held out some hope that this might not be as bad as she thought.

"Sort of." Agent Peterson continued as he leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. "That's definitely part of it. But we want you to be able to use every tool at your disposal. Your life - your very survival - may depend upon it." At the idea of survival her eyes flicked back to the door and she simultaneously felt a little warm and a little queasy. The trapped feeling was settling in more than the first night when she had realized she was locked in her own room.

Peterson shifted closer. "Your appearance - the way you carry yourself and interact with men - those are all tools you need to embrace as part of your arsenal. That's what you and I are going to be working on. People also call it 'Seduction School'. The CIA maintains three locations off and on. There were once three of us but the others moved on. So they move me around and someone decided to gather a class of recruits here. I am very good at what I do. I wouldn't be here if I didn't know what I was talking about. And I understand you are an excellent pupil, isn't that so, Stacy?"

Stacy's face fell. She didn't want to seduce anyone into anything. It was one of the reasons she had put her foot down about getting out of the con game with her father. And the whole exchange had her feeling like she had in high-altitude paratroop training. They had forced them each to go two minutes without an oxygen mask until they could reasonably manage it without losing their balance or having a full on panic attack at the inability to breathe. "I suppose so Agent Peterson." was all the response she could muster.

"Please Stacy. Call me Jason." he said smoothly as he put some distance between them and reclined on the other end of the couch. He had read her initial discomfort and moved away to observe her reactions as he continued. She was trying to breathe normally while Jason described motivations for male behavior and how they could be exploited. It was honestly nothing different than Stacy herself had witnessed as a juvenile con artist. Most men were pretty simple and predictable. But she had never envisioned herself being part of a discussion quite like this in a place from which she could see no escape.

As he droned on the air became thicker and she could only think of the first time she had been subjected to anything close to what he was suggesting.

.

* * *

.

Scottsdale, AZ; January 1997

.

When she was about fourteen and a half her father had suddenly realized she was becoming a young woman. He seemed to be the last to do so. She luckily had older female acquaintances over the course of the past few years that had helped her out when she first got her period and when she first realized she needed a bra.

Just over a year prior she had started stealing or borrowing feminine products so dad hadn't had an opportunity to question their addition to a grocery list. She was too embarrassed to discuss it with him and it either just hadn't occurred to him or was something he deliberately ignored.

A year prior to that, embarrassment drove her to seek out advice on undergarments. A lady who lived in the other half of their rented duplex offered her some of her grown daughter's old things. Thereafter she just told her father that she needed new underwear and he gave her some money - which she stretched as much as she could - and turned her loose in the appropriate stores.

Both were easily avoided topics. Despite her less-than-typical involvement in many of his cons, he still thought of her as his little girl.

But her father was always one to recognize an advantage and they were living in an affluent area at the time with plenty of high school age boys from wealthy families. Dad had wanted her to befriend a few of them - cozy up and case their houses to see whether it was worth him putting together something more elaborate to gain access to the homes or possibly find out enough about the families' schedules and the alarm systems to maybe gain some quick access to valuable, easy to fence items.

He sheepishly instructed her to be careful and to get up and leave if anything made her uncomfortable but didn't provide much more direction than that.

Despite her lack of confidence over her gangly build, less than stylish clothes, slight overbite and generally unkempt hair, it had been easy enough to get the attention of a few of the boys. Looking back on it they must have considered her as easy a mark as she considered them.

One boy, coincidentally named Mark, seemed like the most affluent of the bunch. His father was an executive at some bank and his mother was a real estate lawyer. Truth be told, she had noticed him just as the other girls had. He was a baseball prodigy and extremely handsome and she was pleased just to be noticed by him.

Mark and his cronies hung out at the convenience store across the street from school a few days per week and, after a few days of briefly talking and flirting with him, he invited her over to his house. His parents were attending some social event so the two of them had the house to themselves. She didn't think much about that at the time other than the fact that they wouldn't be interrupted or have to explain her presence in their house.

It seemed Mark was aware of both those facts as well and reached out in an attempt to draw her into an unwanted kiss. His unwelcome advances had escalated quickly from there. He was much stronger than her but she managed to fight him off with a painful wrist lock she had learned over their travels. She got out of the house as quickly as she could but with little useful information and nothing of value. That was the farthest thing from her mind, she was just relieved that none of his friends had been invited back to the house to join them.

When she spoke to her father over dinner she initially only informed him of her lack of results. He was disappointed and she hated disappointing him. He apparently needed some quick cash for something he was working on and had been counting on her getting it or providing information he could use to get it.

But knowing what she knew of what else went on in that house his focus on her apparent failure made her angrier and angrier until she finally blurted out some of what had happened once she was alone with the much larger and stronger boy. She was too angry to notice his relief that she had been able to get away safely and instead accused him of thinking she should be alright with the idea of prostituting herself as part of a con.

Instead of telling her of his previously unvoiced concerns about boys starting to notice her he stuck to what he knew. He tried to split hairs and argued that sex appeal was just something a female con artist needed to admit was in her arsenal and to understand how to use it. That she should be able to keep the situation under control and not do anything she didn't want to do. She tried to explain that it very nearly did get out of control and cried when he seemed to care more about her perceived failure to manage the situation than the ordeal that it was or the even worse ordeal it nearly became.

He tried to soothe her. Told her there were things she needed to learn to prevent smooth-talking men from taking advantage of her. He started in on one of his tried and true bits of wisdom: _Once you know all the cons..._ but she had cut him off. She was too upset and stormed out of the room and locked herself in her bedroom. He was distraught over the fact that he didn't know how to talk to his daughter about such things and that she, justifiably he admitted to himself, thought so little of him. It was the beginning of the end for their bizarre partnership.

She found the entire idea reprehensible and he was never fully able to articulate the lesson he was trying to teach to her and was eventually unable to explain it even to himself. Over the next several days they avoided each other but that was challenging in their tiny apartment so they argued about it. She eventually told him she was out. Done with his cons and this life of deception. That he needed to find a place for them to stay and enroll her in a real high school or she would report him and say he was trying to whore her out. In her mind, it was close enough to the truth.

That seemed to get through to him although he still seemed shocked at her interpretation of his intentions and still insisted he was just trying to teach her how the world worked. Shortly after that her father wrapped up his business in Scottsdale and they settled into a suburb of San Diego where they rented a small house, he paid a local orthodontist cash for the braces for her teeth he had promised two years ago and she attended James Buchanan High School for the next year and a half.

He briefly considered reuniting her with her mother but didn't think compounding his error by forcing her to face those regrets was the best idea. Better to give her some sort of chance at a more normal life and he simply couldn't bear to part with his child completely even as angry as she was with him all the time.

Her father was rarely around thereafter. He would come and go for weeks at a time. She couldn't know that he was deliberately keeping his 'hunting grounds' separate from their new home base - a decision that resulted in him becoming more and more reckless. She worked a few small cons with him during that time but she was adamant about limiting her role and not doing as much as flirting with anyone. He sheepishly agreed still trying to explain that had never been his intention.

Eventually the day came when he was taken into custody as she watched from a distance as an ATF agent guide his head so he didn't bump it as he entered the car. The day she met Deputy Director Graham and set herself on this three year course of reshaping herself into a deep cover CIA agent. It was the first time she had seen her father in six weeks.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; May 2001

.

"...You wouldn't be here if you didn't have all the right tools to do that. But I noticed you left a lot of responses on your forms blank. We'll have to talk about some of that but it's nothing to be embarrassed about. A lot of your fellow recruits don't have much experience either but that's never been a problem."

The drone of his voice had somehow gotten closer and she wondered when his hand had found her knee. She wanted to react at his touch and the fact that he was close enough for her to notice the shiny residue in each nostril but her limbs felt like they were immersed in wet cement. Fortunately, at precisely 2:30 the lock to the door disengaged and the ever present green light indicated her opportunity to escape. "Well, looks like our time is up."

Jason Peterson rose, took her by the hand and helped her stand. He walked her to the door as he continued "Don't worry, Stacy. I can arrange it so we have as much time as we need to discuss this. You're not my only student who needs a little... extra attention. We'll get you sorted out in no time. Better hurry along for now though."

The air felt cooler and the world less confining as soon as she stepped out the door and she wondered what had changed. She looked back as she left. She couldn't see his face as he crossed the room, blew out the tiny candle and placed a lid on the container of hot oil that had been filling the room with its scent.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Underground; May 2001

.

Stacy had slowly regained her senses as she left the annex and the green lights herded her toward a session on general spy craft. When Graham had made his offer to her he had told her she would be trained to be a government agent. He had offered the moon and stars and made some rather clear threats as well.

For her part, her high school experience was a nightmare, she was watching classmates preparing to go to prestigious colleges. Despite being more intelligent than any of them, she didn't have the complete academic record under an identity that would hold up to close scrutiny that would be needed to apply to the schools she might have wanted to attend. She could only hope to bounce around some lesser schools and build such a life on yet another false identity.

Yet Graham had seemingly delivered. She found herself - or a version of herself - attending one of the most prestigious universities in the world and excelling. And excelling at any number of exciting skills meant to be part of her new trade. She naïvely thought it would be similar to her perceptions of any other law enforcement job. Sure she might have to play a part to gather evidence on people but she wouldn't be doing what she thought her father had once suggested. Or what Jason had implied.

Between the less than exciting prospects of a mundane life and the potential ugliness a female con artist might engage in she chose door number three and the life of adventure she thought it entailed. She might have to defend herself or even possibly shoot a suspect in extreme circumstances but she wouldn't be hurting people to pull a job or fight for her share of a haul. She certainly wouldn't be a glorified hooker just to get close to a criminal on the off chance that he said something incriminating in her presence.

They had never discussed what she was doing all that training for but Graham had told her that based on her tremendous potential he had 'something special' in mind for her. That had been enough to keep her motivated all that time. She had made some faulty assumptions. That must have been what the note in the car had meant. _'Time to earn your keep.'_ it had said. She was now more clear-headed but just as fearful of what was to come as she had been while trapped in Jason's - Agent Peterson's - office.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Woods and Grounds; May 2001

.

"...Well, I 'magine they'd ask some pretty...personal...questions for that one. Sex stuff and whatnot."

The recollection of her experience in that office had left her almost forgetting what she had started to ask as they walked back from the sniper range. What did Agent Peterson have in mind when he talked about extra attention and getting her sorted out? And she was still seething at the dismissive, condescending tone he had used and her slowness in realizing that he was using something to dull her senses and reactions that she had naïvely thought to be some sort of incense or air freshener.

"Yeah, lots of sex stuff. Things I don't think are anyone's business. First times and things you've done. And whatnot. Lots of whatnot." She had considered telling him more. But he had said so many complimentary things about her. Offered her a show of respect. Said she had backbone - gumption - traits that he appreciated. She wouldn't go crying to him. Or anyone else. Ultimately, Agent Peterson had been supremely confident in his ability to act with impunity here. She couldn't risk being wrong, trusting the wrong person and tipping her hand. Despite her restored clarity after meeting with agent Peterson, she was likely just as alone and helpless as he had clearly implied that she was.

Gunny had laughed at her response but stopped at the sickened look on her face. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face her until she looked up and did the same.

"Look here, Recruit. I been watchin' you in your 'valuations. We always have two or three observers compare notes. Some the best most loyal people in the US of A. They don't let just anyone see the faces of the recruits good enough to come here. Even so, hardly anyone gets to see more'n a couple of the things you can do. 'Cept for that knife tossing bit. Word got out on that one. Mostly a person knows yer good at that one thing but no one knows how many things yer that good at. I get run o' the place so I seen most o' what you been doin'. An' I'm not s'posed to tell you about other recruits but there have been more than a few ladies through here lately and they're nowhere near what you can do.

"For some of the sessions it don't make sense to start until we have enough students to keep instructors busy. It's taken a while to whip them into any kind of shape while we've been watching you push your limits and I been cleaning up betting on your knife tossing and your sparring wins when you start a new style. Smartest thing I seen was that one who started sparring you 'gainst other recruits. You really helped them along, jus' so you know. We just got a couple more and then this Peterson shows up. Director's pick. He apparently gets the results the Director wants and that's about all I know about him. Now this eep stuff..."

"Eep?"

"Well, a buncha vowels an' a "P" ain't exactly "SCUBA"...hardly rolls off the tongue so I calls it eep. And I ain't s'posed to talk about other trainings but every agent goes through it and as far as I'm concerned, it's only about two things. Making sure an agent can turn on some kind of charm on the front end of a mission to get someone off their game - set up another move - that's the Infiltration part. Though there's a buncha better ways to infiltrate somewhere. Keeping them on the hook is the Inducement part - and it ain't right to ask you ladies to take that any further than you can stomach. But there's all kinds of women who come through here. Some look like you do and can't do what you can. Some can match some of your skills and are a little plainer...not sayin' they're ugly or anything just..." and he sighed, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, before finding his thought again down a completely different track.

"D'ya know what a Ghillie suit is?" when she shook her head to indicate she did not he continued. "Well, I spent half my life in one, seems like. It's major camouflage. Becoming a part of the landscape. If some asshole in a country we never been in hadn't got a lucky first shot with a mortar that killed my spotter and mangled this leg o mine I'd still be wearing one. Some of us have a calling. Like I think you do. But like me in that Ghillie suit, the agents that don't look like you do can hide in plain sight. Blend in. You...well, look...I got two daughters so I don't want you takin' this the wrong way 'cuz they're both beautiful. The oldest though...ev'ry thing stops when she walks in a room. You got the same thing going for you."

He didn't want her to get the wrong idea about making comments about her appearance but couldn't meet her eyes and see the smile that had erupted at his compliment. Or see her face fall when he continued. "But I don't know which has it better. The younger looks up to her big sister, wants the same effect on boys. The oldest tells her she only _thinks_ she wants that but what she really wants is to have that effect on the _right_ boy and the rest - boys and girls - to treat her like a normal person. That's gonna be a big problem for you."

"You'll have to see how big a problem. They prolly won't let you choose what they ask you to do so you gotta be ready for anything. Some of these girls coming through here...well, they ain't what I'd call 've fought a few of them. Seen you train 'em up a little but they're not made of the same stuff as you. I think a few might be pros. But that ain't even the thing. Ev'ryone's gotta come from somewhere. But this eep stuff...if they take it to extremes it means askin' things of these girls that shouldn't be asked. You follow me?"

At another nod, he sighed and continued. "So if this guy - Peterson - is any good, he won't just teach you how to wink and sashay and whatever else you can do to get a man off his game. You need to learn to hide that light of yours enough to stay inconspicuous when you need to. Blend in a little better than a woman who looks like you tends to. See if you can get your spy craft instructors to double down on that part. If you get dolled up and go for shock and awe jus' know what your getting into. And don't let it get outta hand. Yer better than that. And you should cut a man's balls off if he tries anything you don't approve of."

"I hope it doesn't come to that."

"Well, me neither. But that's why we train you up. To deal with things that most would never have to even consider dealing with. Think you'll be alright?

She already didn't want to share her misgivings about Agent Peterson. The way he had made her feel trapped and uncertain. But here he was trusting her to know her limits.

"Yeah. I can take most anything as long as people are straight with me."

He began walking again and only reinforced that idea before going off on another tangent. "That's why I like you. Nothin' fazes you. Some people call it Sparrow School, you know?"

"Sparrow School?"

"Yep, seduction training. Sparrow School. That's apparently what the Russians used to call it. Or at least some novel a recruit left behind for me says so. It's "Raven School" for the male agents."

"Well that sounds a lot cooler than Sparrows."

"Oh, not even. They call male agents Ravens and female agents Swallows."

"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

He had said what he intended to say and was trying to lighten her mood a bit. Even so he laughed at her outburst. "I know. It's crass as hell. But sparrows - the bird - also mean travel and adventure so maybe go with that instead? I don't care for the whole thing either. Even less for the fact that some ladies comin' through here seem to only be here for that reason. Swallows. Sparrows. I don't know where they get 'em but some don't even seem all that plussed about it." He seemed lost in his own musings on the topic. "I honestly don't know why they have a man teaching you ladies such things."

"Wait a minute. That's what you thought I was here for, isn't it?"

"Well, lookin like you do - beggin yer pardon. But I already 'pologized. You just didn't know what I was 'pologizin' for. Maybe they're just looking for people who can get up close to a target. Opposite of what we're doing here. How 'bout you? You any good with a knife up close?"

Stacy smiled remembering his characterization of her proficiency with pea-shooters and offered a cheeky repeat of that same observation. "I'm alright."

"Mor'n alright." he smiled back. "I seen you throw 'em, seen you fight. Figure someone might have you in mind for some wet work." He studied her face as she contemplated the idea before offering "Hey! Get 'em before they get you recruit. Beats the alternative."

He had brought her down again but had an ace up his sleeve. "Know what else the Russians gave us?"

"What?" she asked distractedly.

"They used to have these weights for weighing crops. Like an old Lady Justice scale, you know? But they hung the weights from a bar instead of puttin' 'em on a tray. Sort of a cannonball with a handle." he paused with the barn in sight as he saw the realization dawn on her. "Did you like my art work?"

"You ass!" He chuckled as he dodged a half-hearted swat that Stacy reared back but never actually swung. "I hate that thing."

"I started usin' them kettlebells in the Marines. All the gym you'll ever need in one hunk of iron. Try to get hold of one if yer in the same place long enough. The benchmark for that little test is 200 in 10 minutes just so you know. Its as much a test of will as functional strength and endurance. Not that we won't push you even harder after that. Also, start doing your pull ups with a light pack on. You wont be pulling yourself up a ledge in nice light workout clothes with no gear on ya. Everything we do here is about keeping you alive. Remember that."

"I'll get that two hundred." she muttered as they crossed the remaining distance to the barn.

The gunnery sergeant was pleased to see the competitive fire back in her eyes saying "I bet you will. Ain't no quit in you. You'll be pulling two-fifties based on what I've seen." as he led her back into the barn.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Barracks, Room Six; May 2001

.

When she finished her day the demon bell had defeated her again. But she had achieved a count of 184 and had not lost her lunch. With a slight adjustment to her early pace she almost had it. She returned to her room to find tomorrow's schedule revised to meet with Peterson again - something slightly less stomach turning now that she felt a little more empowered to make her own decisions about how much to embrace the concept - and a military sniper's handbook waiting for her in the delivery drawer.

It would have been easy to chalk up to 'required reading' but when she flipped through it there were very few pages devoid of notes in the margins. In several places whole sections were crossed out and rewritten sideways in a tiny, neat cursive scrawl. This wasn't a handbook, it was _his_ handbook.

She heard the shower start next door and decided to kill some time before going for a shower herself when her green light indicated her assigned time by reading the manual. The dry handbook itself was boring as hell but the rewritten version in the margin was not. In places, Caretaker - Gunny - had simply simplified the text to the point where it made more sense and didn't take two pages to make the point. She was halfway through the book before she realized how much time had passed.

Her door's lock was still engaged past her designated shower time and someone was clearly in the shower. She could hear it running through her wall. And realized it had been running for over half an hour.

.

* * *

.

026: Of Swallows and Ravens

.

* * *

"...There's no turning back"

\- Tears for Fears, _Everybody Wants to Rule the World_

* * *

.

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; June 2001

.

This was the second time that Stacy Mills found herself standing in this particular hallway staring at this particular door.

Nearly a month ago she had been lying on her bunk reading a sniper's handbook with the insights of a master of his craft scribbled throughout. The diary of an artist.

It had taken nearly a hundred pages for her to wonder why the shower next door had not stopped running. She knew it was risky but decided it would only prove her mastery of yet another skill if she could successfully defeat the electronic lock on the door with a few odds and ends she had collected during her time here.

It was child's play.

The bathroom was open access - the only room with no door much less a lock - but it still had the acknowledgement pad inside the door and the light inside the door lit when it was time to leave. Since she hadn't officially left her room in any way the system would recognize she ignored the pad for the first time during her time in the Facility and headed to the back of the room that had apparently once allowed multiple occupants. There was a communal shower with a small pile of clothes haphazardly dropped just outside. A few bloodstains were visible but nothing life-threatening.

Stacy stepped in to find a pitiful creature curled up in a ball under still steaming hot water from the tanks that used to allow for a dozen recruits. A thin waif of a girl who looked like she might have been even younger than her own nearly nineteen years.

Stacy slipped her shoes off and stepped in as close to the stream of the shower as she could without getting soaked, squatted down and cleared her throat.

The girl looked up with huge doe eyes and said matter-of-factly "I got blood on my clothes."

Stacy glanced back at the pile and back to the girl still unsure of what had happened but with no visible injuries narrowing it down quickly "Nothing that can't be fixed, I'm sure. I'm Stacy."

She looked back suspiciously before responding quietly "Well...then I guess I'm Tiffany."

"What happened, Tiffany?"

The girl broke eye contact and looked down as she responded "He said I needed to bite the bullet. Couldn't risk me panicking on an assignment. Said he had to know if I could handle it for him to pass me. Said people who come here don't just get to go home if they can't do their job. Said you make a deal you have to see it though. Said..."

The girl had started to hyperventilate while continuing to speak as she began to rock back and forth at mention of a deal so Stacy stopped her and lifted her chin to look her in the eye.

"Tiffany?" she said roughly to interrupt her. Then more softly "Tell me everything."

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Barracks Showers; May 2001

.

Stacy had already noticed that her schedule had been modified with a similar summons for the following evening. Tiffany had told her about a meet and greet remarkably similar to her own. Stacy had tried not to dwell on her vulnerability while locked in The Facility for over a month but she recognized the same subtle threats and references to the confinement system of the Facility that had made her so uneasy.

Tiffany had completed the forms that Stacy had left blank. She confided that she felt just as much anxiety over stating that she was a virgin as Stacy had felt about sharing her own brief but active - what some might even consider slightly promiscuous - recent sexual history. Peterson had apparently made similar assumptions from Stacy's non-answers because the words sounded familiar. Tiffany had described that same hazy feeling in both meetings that Stacy had felt at her meet and greet earlier in the week.

She had wondered, if Tiffany had not warned her, if she would have been influenced - more easily or completely - by his subtle psychological warfare. If she had not figured out he was using something to dull their senses while he played his game of dominance and control. The Facility was designed to put recruits at the mercy of those who controlled it. It must have seemed like an amusement park for a predator like Agent Peterson.

Stacy had been fortunate to have so many positive experiences with her instructors. Tiffany had been here for only a few days. She had a few unremarkable assessments, a sparring session with Stacy (Stacy remembered her by her build) and her meeting with this asshole. He had made her feel worthless and expendable.

When Tiffany had seen instructed later that week to report to Jason's office she didn't think anything of it. An hour later she was desperately trying to maintain her composure, get back to her room as quickly as possible and worrying excessively about avoiding bleeding on her clothes. She managed to get cleaned up in the communal bathroom before breaking down in the corner and curling up into a ball where Stacy had found her.

As Stacy helped Tiffany back to her room, the trembling girl mused that she hadn't overly romanticized what her first time might be like but she hadn't expected it to be essentially a homework assignment. The green light over the door of room number eight was still lit and Tiffany panicked at a thought that leapt to the front of her mind.

"You're out of your room! He said they could take us out at any point. How are you gonna get back in? He can't know I saw you. He..."

"Shhh. It'll all be alright. I can manage the doors. And I can take care of him. Don't worry..." and with the beginnings of a plan starting to form she held Tiffany securely by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes "...I got this."

"Thank you. Thank you for finding me and thank you for listening. I won't tell anyone we saw each other but... I won't forget it."

Tiffany slipped through her door and the lock engaged. Stacy could hear the girl sobbing and assumed correctly that she had collapsed against the door.

The green light lit above the propped-open door to her own room and she realized that Peterson must have set the door sequence to wait for his victim to be secured in her room via thumbprint identification before allowing the remaining sequences to play out. Apparently, based on scheduled shower time, Stacy was next. And as she hurried to get her towel and shower caddy she steeled her resolve at that thought.

She was next.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; May 2001

.

After her morning PT she checked her wardrobe and found clothing similar to what Tiffany had described. Fancier lingerie than she was accustomed to wearing and a slinky black dress. She wore her combat boots to protect her feet but three inch heels had also been provided.

She had feigned a blister this morning and while mock bandaging her finger - having noticed the residue around Peterson's nostrils - had palmed smelling salts from the first aid kit present in most rooms. _Once you know all the cons..._

That evening, when she had typically been in her room every night of her stay here, she reported to Peterson's office as instructed. The room was already thick with whatever that noxious smell was and, as she pressed her thumb to the scanner, she subtly inhaled the contents of a broken tube with a benign gesture and sniff. It burned like hell but would hopefully keep her clear headed long enough for what she planned next.

He had made one recruit feel worthless and expendable and Stacy was determined to portray the same reactions to his well practiced playbook until the moment she had been planning since Tiffany shared her story.

The smelling salts weren't completely effective as he began his well rehearsed monologue. It mirrored what Tiffany had told her in some ways, subtly leading up to the purpose of this late night visit. Things like she _...couldn't afford to be seen as someone who wasn't able to manage an uncomfortable situation... ...better to test her abilities in a secure environment... ...she had to be ready for anything... ...no one leaves here a virgin..._

Maybe that was what her father had been clumsily trying to teach her - or at least open her eyes to - years ago. That there were evil, manipulative men like this in the world. It was definitely a sink or swim approach but he had thought she could handle it. She had always been so tough - or had always made him think so - but something like this wasn't something a father should push onto his daughter in any form. She fought the pull of such musings - the same fears she had succumbed to on her first visit here - as he demonstrated superficial knowledge of her that he must have learned from other instructors.

He pointed out that she had invested years of her life on her training - something she had confirmed when it had been obvious to a few instructors. That she possessed combat and language skills but knew nothing of how to be an effective spy. That she needed his recommendation to become a field agent but maybe they would keep her on as an analyst or linguist if she couldn't do what needed to be done in the field. Maybe they would reconsider all of the terms of the deal that brought her here.

She felt the fear creeping into her veins at the very idea that he could take away what she had trained so hard for during the past several years. What would she do - where would she go - if she failed at this? And even now, as she replayed all the other things he had said about the future for which she had sacrificed so much...

Stacy recognized every bit of what Tiffany had described. A point where she didn't know whether he had coerced her with threats or she had simply given in. Either way, he had played her and that was what hurt the most. And he was pushing all of the same buttons with her now. Tiffany had said there was a moment when she felt like she had slipped away into herself.

Stacy could feel all of that. The fear of what might happen trapped underground at this man's whim. The thinly veiled threat she woke up with every day for the past month that Tiffany had only managed - and not very well - for a few days was made into an explicit threat. The fear of returning to whatever life without purpose she had bargained away to be here.

But Stacy also recognized the lie. The vagueness of the threats. Peterson knew or guessed that a deal had been made to bring her here but said nothing specific about her father. Knew she was trained but not how well. It was all a bluff. But he thought he had set the hook and got back on that script - the point where Tiffany had said she knew she had broken - with four little words that made her skin crawl.

_"Dance for me, baby."_

Stacy had been waiting for it as he had mostly followed the same script Tiffany had deacribed and felt renewed vigor at hearing the words. Tiffany said when she started to dance and then followed his instructions to strip out of her clothing and then what came next she had been outside of herself. And Stacy portrayed the same dulled, submissive reaction even as she began to slowly strip down to her undergarments.

That was as much of a thrill as he would get.

_"Dance for me, baby."_

She approached him when he said it and she could tell by his predatory smile that he thought he had her as subdued as Tiffany had been. He hadn't questioned why she had worn her boots or why she had kept them on but he probably should have as a graceful spin of her dance saw her right foot rise and come crashing down viciously into his temple knocking him from his chair.

Stacy was pleased to see that whatever substance Agent Peterson had used was not much more effective than her own solution as he began to panic. It had worked when he had felt in control but now...not so much. And the tabkes had already turned completely. Now that she had taken control her fear was gone. She felt nothing but rage.

He was more than a little stunned but she left nothing to chance as she pounced and pulled him into a Muay Thai clinch and repeatedly struck him in the jaw and temple with an unrelenting series of vicious right knees. Bone and cartilage was destroyed yet as he stumbled backward he foolishly regained a standing position. It was definitely excessive but something Tiffany was unable to do for herself as Stacy threw all her weight into a mighty snap kick directly into his crotch and Agent Peterson crumpled to the ground.

She knelt beside him and lifted his face by the chin as she broke character and spoke for the first time.

"Goodnight... Baby." She rose quickly from her crouch before reversing directions and her elbow came crashing down on his temple putting an end to his mewling.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Wood and Grounds; May 2001

.

At her next session with Gunny he had greeted her with an odd but simple statement prompted by details she had no way of knowing.

"Happy to see you."

Stacy had sat on the couch with an unconscious Peterson tied to his desk chair in front of her, holding his drawn samurai sword to his neck until he stirred. She had considered blowing the unknown oil in the burner in his face but had instead simply extinguished the candle under it. There was no doubt who was in control now. When he woke, she got his attention by moving the blade to his groin.

"Say one god damn word and I'll do what a friend of mine suggested."

She lazily held the blade between his legs just staring at each other until an hour after she had arrived the door unlatched on schedule. "Well...Jason...it seems our time is up."

On her way out she slipped the sword - which she could tell was a cheap decorative replica by its heft - under the open door and pulled upward until it snapped before pulling the door closed.

She had returned to her room, showered and gone to bed before Peterson could extract himself from his bonds. Before calling for help he pulled up a Facility management program and verified that recruit Stacy Mills had signed into her room via thumb print and executed a command that had never actually been used at the Facility.

Gunny had been surprised by the system alarm. Recruits were not made aware that knockout gas for subduing recruits for any number of reasons was not the only type of gas that was available to be administered. The system was requesting confirmation of a kill code for a priority recruit in room six and registering a system malfunction. About that same time a call for medical assistance came from Peterson's office.

Only the next day, after personally delivering Agent Peterson to the nearest military hospital did Gunny find the source of the malfunction. If someone else had given secondary confirmation the system would not have administered the gas due to the hack job Stacy had done to her door lock the night before.

After a surly, quiet hike they were working on moving targets today - human shaped ones replacing the previously used circular ones - moving at walking speed and distances of 800 to 1,200 yards.

"You missed."

Stacy checked her own shot in the range finder. "What makes you think I wasn't aiming for his balls? I hit what I was aiming for."

"Somethin' bothering you?"

"Lots of things are bothering me. How much longer do I have to stay here?"

"A while yet. Still got some things to go over. And that one class you don't like ain't going away. But I think the problem has been resolved."

Stacy was more concerned about a different person and finally voiced what had been bothering her since that night. "Have any recruits been taken away from here?"

"If I told you that a female recruit left here for medical reasons and is set to come back tomorrow could we get back to shootin'?"

At a nod in response he tried to get her refocused on the task at hand. "Good. I want head shots from now on."

"Fine." And Stacy tracked the path of the next Peterson-silhouette before putting her next shot through his eye. Not a perfect score but exactly where she had been aiming.

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Wood and Grounds; June 2001

.

They were coming back from their fifth session - targets at 1,500 yards moving on angled tracks at vehicular speeds - and their previous repartee had been mostly restored. They limited themselves to what he knew of general spy craft (and his curiosity about what she had learned) but he was more knowledgable about infiltration - traditional infiltration they had settled on calling it - and evasion. He stopped as he had previously done before they stepped into the clearing where the barn was located.

"You'll be coming out here with me every other Monday morning from now on. It's just practice. There's only so much practice you can reasonably expect to get at this sort of thing but - once you're outta here - try to get some shooting in whenever you can. Yer already getting full marks from me. We'll work on some little things but you mostly just need some repetition."

"Yer not the first girl shooter I've had but yer the first one I'd consider one of my boys. Don't give me shit about saying it that way. I'm not about to say yer one of my girls what with some of the stuff going on here. Speaking of, yer not done with that eep shit. It's gonna start back up and I think... You know I hate the whole thing but I think you should listen. Don't take no crap and be smart but just listen and use what you can. There's a reason this fellow was sent here. Might save your life."

.

* * *

.

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; June 2001

.

She had been notified yesterday in the same manner as before - a modification to her schedule adding an unusual evening session - to be where she was at this moment.

Standing in that particular hallway, staring at that particular door.

But she'd be damned if she was going to let three years of training go to waste - to be relegated to a lesser support role if she couldn't master her emotions and find a way to deal with this part of the world she had chosen as had been strongly implied during her last such meeting. She would just play a part as she had done all her life. Detach herself from the situation. Take as much as she could stomach, watch for traps and if all else failed she had palmed a combat knife while securing her weapons after her last sniper training session after Gunny's warning.

She steeled herself for what was to come and burst into the room as confidently as she could.

"I'm not sorry about last time." She announced as she entered and thumbed-in. She registered the man sitting behind the desk but also took in the changes to the office. The decor was different, warmer, but she was looking and checking for anything like that noxious chemical that had been present the last time she was in this room. Failing to find it she looked around for other traps seeing in her peripheral vision that the man behind the desk had not moved. "And I'll listen to what you have to say but no matter what comes out of your mouth you and I are _not_ going to be fucking."

"Good to know." came the curt reply in a smooth, deep voice she did not recognize.

She turned to look at him more fully and was met by the stare of a man who was not Agent Peterson.

.

* * *

_TO BE CONTINUED_

* * *

.

A/N2: I wonder who it could be? Hopefully, that wasn't too bad - at least no more exploitive or misogynistic than the topic inherently is. I feel horrible for Tiffany. As we all should and I do not want to minimize her victimization at the hands of someone she should have been able to trust just because she is not a primary character. I couldn't bring myself to portray her actual assault explicitly or via direct dialogue.

Hopefully not getting too preachy or sounding like a PSA but: our society pretends it doesn't have a problem but there is a culture of rape, acceptance of rape and victim blaming. A woman's chance of being raped in the US is 1 in 5, half of all victims do not report their assault / attempted assault and only 3 percent of rapists ever see the inside of a jail. No woman ever 'deserves' or 'invites' such a thing under any circumstances and rape is a violent act whether by force, fear or threat.

Ultimately I decided 'Stacy' was a little too savvy to fall for this directly and too well trained to not fight it but not all women have all of that working to their advantage when faced with such situations. Frank discussion to follow - about what happened here and seduction in general - but nothing as disturbing as this betrayal.

The kettlebell SSST (Secret Service Snatch Test) is a real thing. It's brutal and I have about as much motivation to do it as I do to run a marathon. Maybe one day. And attempting it with minimal instruction is probably a good way to meet an ER doctor. Watching the trainers and contestants on Biggest Loser 'use' kettlebells makes my rotator cuff hurt. I don't know how no one has gotten hurt. Not to be attempted by novices! But I figure Sarah...err, Stacy is in really good physical condition, a quick learner and they wanted to really push her unlike some of their less capable recruits. And Stacy's trainers still have a twist they haven't sprung on her.

The Tom Clancy novel referenced is _The Bear and the Dragon_. It has a bit about 'Sparrow School' that I checked out on Google books... Not impressed with the tone of it even though I suspect it was meant to vilify the character whose thoughts were being portrayed. But I will always stop channel surfing whenever _The Hunt for Red October_ is on...

Next time: Someone else has his say on the topic of seductions and we close out that training. Then it's back to the future...err, present...err, past but present in the context of...(sigh)...back to Chuck


	11. XI: The Art

...in which our young protagonist has a candid discussion about the more disagreeable aspects of her job and considers the nature of sacrifice and the illusion of choice...

Canon Reference: General (seduction as a theme). Continuation of the previous non-canon flashback arc.

Content: One chapter; basically a long discussion (nearly 14K) that a female spy in this universe should probably have with _someone_ (purely hypothetical, not necessarily foreshadowing); it ran a little long so we won't circle back to canon (i.e., no Chuck) until next time

Warnings: Discussions of non-consensual sex (Spoiler: I consider 'seductions' in this context to be non-consensual despite any circumstances that may _seem_ to indicate voluntary participation)

A/N: Seductions are one of the most inherently misogynistic concepts I can think of yet a staple of spy fiction that is often used very carelessly. But I have to keep reminding myself that I am basically writing genre fiction - not strictly spy fiction but maybe a cross between pulp and spy? - and trying to fit it into show canon so quite a few plot treatments will be unavoidably contrived.

As I tried to conceive a through-line that collides with seduction driven subplots along the way AND _accepts_ a darker underbelly of espionage organizations in general - accepts them as fact with no tactic deemed taboo - I gave the topic of seductions WAY too much thought. I have come to consider seductions to be among the most if not the most dangerous and terrifying thing a spy can do in such a universe and, just as with the exaggerated violence of this world, I don't want to shy away from the ramifications.

I cannot fathom the physical vulnerability women have to account for in social situations every day much less something that deliberately invites such risks. I just hope no one confuses my in-universe pro-con arguments to be in any way reflective of my true opinions but rather reflections of the characters, possible ways to mentally process extremely unlikely scenarios and admitted contrivances (spy-splaining - hopefully not the other thing) as a means to enable certain later canon events. I could continue to hint around at some treatments of the topic as we go or show a discussion - one we all think happened in some form - to establish the rules of that universe.

I am so very glad that so many of you stuck with me through the events of the previous installment. I - understandably - lost a couple of story followers but have picked up a few more. Thank you for your trust.

Those of you who opted out but have returned, thank you for coming back but unfortunately this installment is more of the same. Discussion only this time but a discussion between teacher and student of the potential uses of distasteful tactics, who might engage in them, when and why, etc. If you can tolerate that, only the first section deals with the more offensive elements from last chapter. Skip to the first hard break if you so desire and a recap appears below, as promised.

Since I stubbornly insist on including seductions as a concept, I hope you will call me out if I horribly mishandle it. I don't want to treat it salaciously, glorify it or falsely romanticize it yet I will attempt to rationalize it within the story universe to support the extent it appears in canon and in a tone similar to the rest of the story. In case it isn't obvious, I am extremely uncomfortable with these themes and my ability to make anything resembling a point but also find it challenging to attempt to face them. There are also certain aspects that may seem gratuitous now but have their purposes.

Unlike the first two monster chapters (Sarah's introspective character sketch in Ch 1 and Graham's reflective history of the Intersect and previously unknown connections from Ch 6) this pseudo-manifesto is actually two people speaking to each other relatively openly.

Dialogue, I has it!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: No ownership or claim to the television show CHUCK or the movie _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also SpeedyTheMouse informed me that the most recent version of 'Nikita' - which I have somehow not seen a moment of despite being a fan of all previous versions (honest!) - also features a secret facility beneath a barn / farmhouse. So no ownership or claim to _Nikita _(in any of it's forms), _Batman Begins_ (if they can get away with a vaguely explained 'blue flower toxin' I can use some of the same pseudo-scientific words) or _Legally Blonde_ (not until the end note) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

.

_Previously, on 'Becoming' _(Part X Recap):

Shortly before her nineteenth birthday, an earlier incarnation of Sarah Walker - known as Stacy Mills - arrives at the underground fortress of a training center referred to as The Facility. There is no contact between recruits - and limited contact with instructors - to preserve their covers for future missions via an airlock system used to direct recruits throughout the Facility. The prior history of recruits is also not known to instructors so she is put through rigorous evaluations for several weeks. Her proficiency is sufficient to qualify her for sniper training (permitting her outdoors where she can speak somewhat freely with her instructor) and another trainer utilizes her as a sparring partner / instructor for fellow recruits (with identities obscured by masks).

Once sufficient recruits have been gathered specific trainings beyond basic skills begin and she is unsettled by a meeting with Agent Peterson - her instructor for a topic labelled IIEP - where she is exposed to a soporific drug. In the drug induced haze she recalls her father's clumsy attempt to teach her to be wary of male advances while encouraging their interest as part of her con skills via trial by fire rather than straight forward discussion. Her reaction was to quit participating in his cons and to demand a chance at a real life.

Agent Peterson discusses Infiltration and Inducement of Enemy Personnel (IIEP) - emphasizing the most significant word in the course title - Inducement - while making thinly veiled threats and testing her reactions to them. Her meeting with him concludes without major incident but she realizes how vulnerable she is to unscrupulous instructors in this highly controlled training center.

Later that week, upon hearing unusual activity, she investigates and finds a young girl who has been a victim of rape by that same instructor. She convinces the girl to share her experiences and uses the knowledge to control a second meeting where he intends to do the same to her but she instead brutally beats him unconscious. After a few weeks she is set to re-start her seduction training, entering defiantly having been led to believe that the same instructor has returned...

(A revisiting of the assault appears in the first part of the first chapter below. Skip to the first hard break to avoid it. Only frank discussion and extremely questionable morality thereafter.)

.

* * *

Part XI: The Art

* * *

_"Good to know." came the curt reply in a smooth, deep voice she did not recognize._

_She turned to look at him more fully and was met by the stare of a man who was not Agent Peterson._

* * *

.

027: The Art

The Facility, Annex, Room A113; June 2001

.

He sat behind the large mahogany desk with his elbows on the leather blotter and his fingers laced in front of his face and was impeccably dressed in a three piece suit. With no designated apparel on her schedule she had dressed in her slouchiest hoodie and yoga pants with her hair in a loosely braided ponytail.

The bookcases were devoid of books, mementos or photographs but rather full of well-organized file boxes. There were a few decanters of amber and clear liquids on the low cabinet where there had previously been a cheap display set of replica samurai swords and an incense burner filled with the noxious drug she had been expecting to see. The couch had been replaced with one of a completely different, more contemporary style and there were now two wood and leather chairs in front of the desk with a low table between them.

He was older than the agent she had expected to find here and had a slightly lined but distinguished-looking face with a slightly rounded nose, a prominent chin and piercing, deep set eyes that were currently fixed on hers. Thankfully he wasn't gawking at the rest of her the way the other agent had as he lowered his hands and spoke.

"Ms. Mills, I presume?"

Stacy wasn't willing to soften her position despite her embarrassment or convinced that this man was any less if a threat so she put her fists on her hips and shifted her weight to one foot. "And who would you be? Agent Peterson send you to deal with me? I shouldn't have put anything past him."

"You would be wise not to..." He persisted in looking her directly in the eye as he replied without any indication whether he had been offended by that comment in any way before looking down and organizing a few file folders as he continued. "...but in answer to your question, I am Agent Peterson's replacement. Deputy Director Graham asked me to take over for him after I told him about this." The man leaned forward in his chair and turned his laptop screen around to face her.

It revealed a paused video, split down the center showing two different scenes of the room shot from the same angle. Scenes in this room. He reached around the screen without taking his eyes off hers to tap the 'Enter' key to resume the video on the left from where it had been paused.

_"...to be comfortable with your body in front of strange men. Men you simply don't trust or men you fully intend to kill. If you're really serious about this and want to help your brother, I can help you do that. But first we'll need to see what we have to work with. Overcome your emotions like a real spy must learn to do. I need to assess your strengths and your ability to deal with this kind of thing..."_

The man's voice made her skin crawl and her hands shake. She wasn't sure whether her hands were shaking in revulsion or anger. The fucking pervert had taped them. Tiffany, herself...who knows how many.

The woman on the screen had later recounted being scared to death thinking that this man held the future of her candidacy in his hands. That the deal that had brought her here might be reconsidered. The woman had regarded this encounter as something she had no choice but to endure.

At least that's what Tiffany had told her.

Stacy also knew from Tiffany's account and her own experience that the recording was playing from a point in the conversation where Agent Peterson had been working on her for about fifteen minutes. The sympathetic tone, the subtle challenges to her commitment, the way he had steadily shifted from 'you' and 'I' to 'we' over the course of the conversation...all the clues had been there. Why hadn't she seen? Would she herself have fallen for the same act without being forewarned? And why had this new agent chosen this portion of the conversation to make whatever point he was making?

Stacy involuntarily folded her arms over her chest and hunched a bit with her fingers in her armpits. She glanced around the room to identify the general location of the camera that had produced the footage. The full bookcases left no room for a camera - unless it were concealed within one of the boxes which she saw no evidence of. They were a wall of executive efficiency unlike Peterson's haphazard placement of a few random objects - likely intended only to conceal the camera. She returned her attention to the footage and listened as she heard Tiffany object as much as she dared and how Agent Peterson made it all seem so rational as he broke it down by degrees.

Broke _her_ down by degrees.

Stacy watched and wondered if the girl on the screen could have been her under different circumstances as the girl reluctantly stripped down to her bra and panties on the laptop screen. All the while their apparently former instructor prattled on with some nonsense about how much he had to teach her and how much potential she had - all with an undercurrent of thinly veiled threats of denying her advancement or otherwise derailing her career. A vague reference to a possibility that she might just disappear.

As she watched the girl finish disrobing on the laptop screen Stacy noted that, if her hair been substantially longer, Tiffany's pose as she attempted to cover herself was an almost perfect imitation of Botticelli's _The Birth of Venus_. She would have found the absurdity of it amusing if not for the complete futility of the gesture.

_"Very nice, Tiffany. You certainly have nothing to be ashamed of. Now I need to play a character as much as you need to. We're a team in this - like actors in a play. Think of me as your mark and pretend you have to entice me, captivate my attention...dance for me, baby."_

It was the last phrase that stuck with her. It was just as she had described to Stacy and the cue Stacy had waited for to launch her pre-emptive strike against the man. But for Tiffany, the command had been unexpected and the terrified girl had found herself awkwardly complying before she really realized what she was doing. Once she had followed one unreasonable request it had gone downhill quickly from there.

This new agent paused the footage before the girl Stacy had known for no more than twenty minutes in a shared shower room began to follow any additional directions.

.

* * *

.

"What I find most interesting is the similarity to _this_ footage." With two key strokes the right hand side of the screen began to play in fast motion. The words were a blur but she followed it all and recognized the same approach. And the version of her on the screen deliberately affected similar reactions at all the key places. Side-by-side like this it was incredibly obvious. She was channeling Tiffany - baiting him by anticipating and exhibiting similar outward reactions to everything the man said - with little obvious difference other than combat boots in place of high-heels.

The agent studied her as she watched. He had been notified of all that had happened after the end of this video. Or more accurately after the storage was full; Peterson hadn't been in the best condition to reach the camera after managing to release himself from the chair to which he was inventively bound with Stacy's boot laces and his own belt. He had instead been fixated on one of the archaic features of the Facility and attempted to deploy nerve gas once Stacy had sealed herself inside her room before calling the topside outpost for help.

Gunny had returned from his run to the designated military hospital nearby where he had dropped off Agent Peterson with what turned out to be substantial facial injuries and a ruptured testicle. The kill code Peterson had attempted to execute was blocked on multiple fronts. First, it required independent confirmation. And Gunny had no intention of pulling the plug on Room Six. Or any of his recruits really, but definitely not Room Six.

Second, the system recognized a fault in the door seal and would not deploy the nerve agent without a positive seal on the door. Stacy's hack of the security system allowed her to leave her room and inadvertently exploited a flaw in the system. The bad splice on this circuit would only be detected if a kill code was issued. She had more than one angel on her shoulder that night. The man she had befriended and the woman she had consoled. He would not carry out that order and Stacy's compassion and subsequent actions indirectly blocked the signal while she received the warning she needed.

Upon the new instructor's arrival, Gunny had briefed him on the events that had led to him being requested as a replacement. Discussed the previous instructor's fixation with the punitive and intimidating features of the training base's security system. Turned over the video camera he had found in the room and had insisted on a long discussion of the new instructor's methods and objectives over three glasses of bourbon before Gunny was satisfied enough - if not happy - with his responses to allow him into the Facility. It was uncannily like being asked "_what are your_ _intentions?_"

Stacy grinned when the video showed her abbreviated strip tease transitioning to a lingerie clad beat down. She would have liked to have seen him squirm as she held his flimsy excuse for a sword to his groin or watch him struggle to free himself after the automated door system allowed her to leave but the playback ended with a crisp clack as the new agent closed the laptop from behind leaving his hand on top of the now-closed laptop with his fingers splayed.

"The man everyone seems to know as Caretaker told me there was a problem with the door mechanism to your room?"

"Well, Gunny also said - implied - that same asshole would be here." Stacy smirked at Gunny's advice to be receptive while not revealing that there was a new instructor. She supposed it was both some kind of endorsement and a way to keep her on her toes. "He's a trickster that one."

"Gunny, is it? No surprise the gunnery sergeant took a shine to you. What I find interesting is - in a facility designed to prevent interaction between recruits - you seemed so well aware of what was going to happen in this office that night." Her initial reaction was to regard that comment as a threat but the agent wore a slightly amused smile at the way she had handled this particular situation.

Gunny reported the attempted kill code and Graham was incensed. He had briefly suffered Graham's wrath - suffered the verbal abuse like the career military man he was - until the Deputy Director vented his spleen enough and calmed down enough to concede there was no way Gunny could have known of the after hours meeting. Graham was secretly pleased with how his recruit had dealt with the pervert but this was not how he had wanted her trained. Graham had then turned his wrath on Peterson.

The man in the suit rounded the desk and leaned casually against the front of it as he continued "It would seem that the Deputy Director has taken a particular interest in your training and was livid about this incident. He wanted Agent Peterson prosecuted internally or removed from the agency entirely but was overruled by the Director. Even so, I would expect Agent Peterson to be manning the proverbial radio outpost in Antarctica for the foreseeable future. So how is it that you were so prepared?"

She dodged the question of her absence for her room by keeping it clinical. "I'm meant to be an intelligence operative. I gathered the necessary intelligence." and after a brief, contemplative pause added "She was so ashamed. So scared."

"And that is how he got away with it for who knows how long. I suspect he has been perfecting this particular deception for years. He was the instructor at a site that would not have seen recruits of your capabilities. It seems he misjudged you when you left these blank..." said as he held a thin file folder in front of him before depositing it back on the desk. "...but remember that this training is all about coercion, that the CIA deemed Agent Peterson so good at it that he was tasked with training their recruits to coerce others and what I saw on that tape would have been highly effective against nearly anyone. At least anyone who has taken the path typical of recruits for such roles. But once you learn all the tricks it will be much harder to fool you again."

_Once you learn all the tricks..._ With those last few words, Stacy suddenly recalled her own father and what she now wondered might have been him clumsily trying to warn her almost five years ago. It was less about sex and more about people trying to take things from you. It was a lesson she knew well, but her discomfort when the context included sex - or even the generalities of the intimate relationships she was so unfamiliar with - had blinded her to the true nature of the threat. It wasn't about sex at all. It was about power and violence - or the threat of it. She was opening her eyes; it was a blind spot she couldn't afford to have.

She knew that unscrupulous people could try to coerce her in any number of ways. That if something was dear to you it could be taken away. And finally, that the threat of such a thing was a more powerful weapon than anything that would actually be done to make good on the threat. All you had to do was believe the threat and you had already lost.

Sex was just one more thing that could be coerced from you if you found yourself attached to anything. Attachments were a weapon in your enemy's hands. Even the night of this footage with her plan in mind, she had felt the effects of his manipulations of her fears and suspected the drug in the air had amplified the effect.

And she had grown attached to the idea of becoming a spy.

She had always considered rape a purely physical attack and had confidence in her ability to protect herself - now more than ever given her extensive training. An attack from this unexpected angle may have been the last lesson her father had tried to teach her. If so, he had failed to teach it and she had failed to learn it. He had always been able to explain things to her so clearly but when he came to this one lesson he had done it less than artfully.

Of course, a father having only a lifetime of crime to pass on to his daughter _would_ falter over the discussion about how to prevent herself from being taken advantage of by force or threat. They had never even had a birds-and-bees discussion. And she had accused him of...Oh, the things she had accused him of...

The agent stored her from her musings "I will be destroying this footage personally before the evening is out. It is the only copy and the original footage is stored on this laptop as well. Feel free to be reassured by that or as skeptical as I would be about whether it is entirely true. This is the CIA after all."

"If you wanted to be reassuring you shouldn't have said you would be skeptical."

The male agent was thankful to see every bit of fire 'Gunny' had described was still present in her and smiled widely for the first time and Stacy, who was now uncertain how to stand or what was coming next, realized how handsome he could be when he wanted to. Whether it was despite of or because of the salt and pepper look that he pulled off so well she wasn't quite sure yet. She was just glad to have moved on from the awkward footage of that horrible night. "Langston said you were clever." he stated.

"Nothing clever about it. Just an observation." Stacy replied as she processed that the man had just used the Deputy Director's first name. "Langston? So...personal favor?"

"Yes. And again, clever. I used to instruct on this topic several years ago - for several agencies - and he thought I could help. I noticed that you looked for the camera and I can confirm it is gone. Look closer if you like. Another foolish violation by Agent Peterson...filming deep cover operatives in a facility intended to keep them secret."

.

* * *

.

Stacy was reminded of Tiffany's panic on Stacy's behalf when she suddenly realized Stacy was not in her room and potentially risk. Such a sweet girl even after all she had been through. "What happened to Tiffany?"

"Yes. Well, I've met with the remarkable, surprisingly resilient young woman and she is committed to continuing her candidacy."

"What about the rules? The ones about recruits not seeing each other."

"I think part of the reason she is willing to press on is you. I have some doubts about her ultimate abilities and think she may end up in a lesser role. She is, however, quite clever and resourceful and I think she's capable of being a skilled intelligence gatherer. I'm usually pretty good at evaluating that kind of thing but either way I think she's a bit in awe of you."

"Why would she be in awe of me?"

"The confidence with which you handled her at her worst moment I suspect was part of it. But I may have also reassured her that she wouldn't be dealing with Agent Peterson again. I may also have shown her your video."

The male agent was surprised that Stacy wasn't more amused by that or smug about the praise. Her response was almost apologetic. "I couldn't protect her."

"You couldn't have known she needed you. But you cared for her when you didn't have to. At some risk to yourself. You avenged her as best you could. Even as a part of your own self-defense. You're a bit of a hero to her. If she does end up in a support role of some kind, and were to see a picture of you...I can't imagine anyone who would move heaven and earth more than that young woman to help you in any way she could. If she becomes a field agent, all she really knows is that the two of you were here at the same time. And I am the only one who has seen the full footage or is in a position to deduce that the two of you interacted. I'm quite comfortable bending a rule and pretending it never happened. As is the woman you know as Tiffany. Shall we make it three?"

Stacy nodded. She didn't feel like a hero. She knew she would never mention the young woman she had met in the showers less than a month ago but felt like she hadn't done nearly enough. "But...one more thing. Peterson...on the tape he mentioned a brother..."

"Yes. As I said, she's a remarkable young woman. Her brother made a very foolish decision. Being caught with that much heroin between Vietnam and Thailand... he's fortunate that there was a bit of a dispute over _where_ he would be executed and stand trial."

"You mean the other way around? Stand trial and then executed."

"Not really. His fate was pretty much sealed. That's why she was so desperate. She nearly faced a bribery charge. Or one for lewd acts. The word 'anything' was used. They chalked it up to her distress but an agent there on other business overheard and saw an opportunity. Here at the CIA we have some truly remarkable drugs - as you may have noticed Agent Peterson was able to procure."

"What was that stuff anyway?"

"A relatively mild psychotropic hallucinogen that also amplifies fear response. A tool of torture and interrogation. You'll be trained to withstand them to some degree but there's always a new flavor you weren't expecting. Your forethought and ability to take charge of the situation - control your fear - helped you overcome this particular one. But, with regard to Tiffany's brother, our man in Asia rather cheaply bribed a prison official and switched out the executioners drugs with our own. Shortly thereafter Tiffany's brother's body went missing. We placed him in a rehabilitation facility and have a job placement waiting for him. Whatever else the Deputy Director is, when he makes a deal he stands by it."

"So if she continues as a field agent candidate..."

"He will be looked in on periodically, helped back on the path if needed, and - unless he does anything drastic between check ins - rejoin the good people of the world. He gets his life back."

"At the expense of Tiffany's."

"A choice she made. And if she washes out, he simply doesn't get as many second chances. She bought him one he never should have had just by being here. If she continues, we'll watch out for him as long as she is active or if she is killed in the line of duty. If its a lesser role, its lesser support. Newton's Third Law. For every action..."

"...there is an equal and opposite..."

The coffee table which - combined with the two leather chairs to either side - formed a wall of sorts between them. The agent had reached across the desk and the folder he had retrieved fell on top of the table and interrupted her with a _smack_.

.

* * *

.

He then stood from where he had been leaning against the desk and waved a hand toward the two chairs placed at matching angles to partly face each other and partly face the desk - specifically he waved her toward the one closest to the door. As she noticed this, she also noticed that the green light above the door was still lit and realized she had assumed it had locked as every other door had rather than actually hearing it do so. She would likely be limited to the hallway outside, unable to leave the annex until the appointed time, but she wasn't trapped. He really was making every effort to put her at ease and he noticed that she had noticed.

She took the offered chair, opened the folder and flipped through its contents. He slid a tray with a carafe and two glasses from the edge of the desk to the edge of the low table within easy reach of either chair and filled the glass nearest to her with water as she did so. As he sunk into the chair opposite her he noted her widening eyes. "I'm just the messenger."

Stacy's eyes were misting and and she muttered to no one in particular "...god damn it, dad..."

"Nearly two years he stayed in WitSec. Had a decent if mundane and tedious job. A small house but no mortgage. Even dated a bit. Quite the charmer, your father. Then he started with the small time stuff again..."

Stacy could see the evidence before her. A few minor cons. And arrests. More cons were documented than he had been arrested for. He hadn't completely lost his touch. A burglary charge. Several bookings but only a very few had gone to trial and those had been quick acquittals.

She took the offered glass of water in her hand but looked at his empty one pointedly. He smiled again, poured his own glass of water and drained it halfway. "Again, clever."

"No. Paranoid."

"Good. I like my protégés breathing."

"Is that what I am now? Your protégé?"

"If you like. I _am_ offering. You can only go so far but that door will never prevent you from leaving this room. And, for future reference, the glass could have been drugged as easily as the water."

"I'm looking forward to hearing more about you boys and your mind altering cocktails... Where is he now?"

"Your father? No way of knowing until he surfaces again. Much like Tiffany's brother we can't spare resources to closely follow him. But Lang-...the Deputy Director has honored the spirit of your deal he made with you. He couldn't prevent your father from abandoning his protected identity once he was confident that the contract on his head was no longer a threat. But the man has had some excellent public defenders and favorable rulings and none of those arrests were linked to each other or anything that came before. If you continue, that consideration will continue. If not...he's had plenty of second chances and may have to one day face the consequences."

.

* * *

.

_If you continue, that consideration will continue..._

Before Stacy addressed the question of whether continuing was at all optional she needed to clarify some things.

"Your predecessor..." she no longer felt the need to refer to Jason Peterson by name "...implied that failing this particular training meant failing to become an agent. Gave the impression that we had to...perform...in some way to earn his approval."

The man across from her sighed, sat back in his chair and crossed his right ankle over his left knee. "Perhaps now would be a good time to review the realities of your situation?"

She decided to trust him for now and finally took a sip of her water then cupped the glass between the fingertips of both hands. Hands she was trying to hold steady. "I'd like that. It seems I may have taken some things for granted."

"Yes. That is often the case. The truth is Ms. Mills, the CIA, and Deputy Director Graham in particular, recruit young men and women with perceived potential in a variety of areas. Usually in exchange for some otherwise unachievable consideration. Frequently, over the course of their training, the entirety of that potential doesn't always pan out. The more such candidates see of what is behind the curtain, so to speak, the harder it would be to allow them to leave the agency entirely. No one is going to 'terminate your candidacy' in the way Agent Peterson ominously implied so it would be preferable to place such a candidate in a lesser but still valuable role. But I take it that is not what you had in mind when you accepted Langston's offer?"

"No, it's not." But neither had...enduring...what had been expected of her the last time she was in this office been part of her thought process. "He described an opportunity to change the world...to protect innocent lives and make a difference." The man looked at her pointedly and she knew it would be best to tell the whole truth. "And maybe to live a life of adventure and excitement." With her father's folder still between them, she thought it best not to discuss the downsides of refusing Graham's glamorous offer.

He smiled as she offered that last piece of her motivations for joining the agency. "That is nothing to be ashamed of. I had similar motivations when I was in your place. That opportunity is very real and still within your grasp. But it can come with a substantial price."

The man across from her turned his chair to fully face her and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to emphasize the seriousness of his message before continuing.

"The greatest disservice Agent Peterson could have done is to leave you thinking that - because he used his position to betray the trust of his students - the lessons he claimed to be teaching you were somehow not true or not absolutely critical for you to learn. He abused your trust and whatever power he had but _everything_ he said related to field service - at least in the role we have in mind for you - was one hundred percent correct. You _do_ have to be able to make yourself appear to be comfortable in all manner of undesirable situations. It _is_ crucial that your target not perceive that you are being anything less than genuine. The penalty for failure can be catastrophic. And not just for yourself."

Here he paused for a moment and looked into her eyes to ensure he had her full attention before continuing. "In my opinion, teaching you the art of seduction is secondary to teaching you the art of staying alive."

Stacy thought back to a friend's final message to her over eight months ago. Is that all there would be for her? Simply staying alive? To remain physically intact so she could be moved from one assignment to the next? And she had been occasionally reminded that her success or failure carried ramifications of the life and death variety. It wasn't just her life at stake.

Her new mentor had paused to let the message sink in and took several sips of his water before proceeding. "Manipulating your way in to someone's confidence is only useful if you can then manipulate your way back out of the dangerous situation that comes with it. Your entry into this room, when I showed you that video footage, those or any number of other reactions to uncomfortable situations could get you or someone else killed. That is why I am here. To make sure that doesn't happen."

"I don't think I can stomach any more tests. Especially the kind that seem to come up with this training."

"We'll discuss that in a moment. See if we can work together to find an approach you _can_ stomach. But that is not what I am referring to. I can't do anything about what anyone else has done but I don't want there to be any deceptions between us. It's counterproductive. Part of Agent Peterson's well practiced speech mentioned that no one leaves here a virgin. He's missing the point somewhat but that thought is shared by others and grounded in a very good reason - well, at least a reasonable reason - that we will discuss momentarily. But - in the interest of full disclosure - you were tested before you arrived."

.

* * *

.

As he spoke, the agent had risen from his seat and retrieved a second folder from his desk that he now handed to her before retaking his seat. Stacy felt flushed and her stomach turned as she flipped through this new folder.

It consisted of very personal information. Single page biographies of men she had met in Boston area clubs with accompanying photographs. Some were party boys whose relationship with her had ended at the edge of the dance floor, some had shared some level of physical affection with her, some had shared a bed with her for a few hours at most. She was stricken by a thought more sickening than this invasion of her privacy.

"Tell me I wasn't some sort of Cracker Jack prize for other agents."

The agent had expected a negative reaction to this violation of her trust and privacy but hadn't expected that specific suspicion.

"No. No, not at all. In fact, the inquiry itself is not atypical for someone pursuing certain security clearances. I am speaking more about the motivations and why Agent Peterson thought he had some sort of license to do what he did. If I were to have been here it's the sort of thing I would have encouraged - but not required - of your friend Tiffany. She will have some issues to work through that I feel we owe her to help with; another reason Peterson's approach is not only repulsive but counterproductive. But of the men in that folder, one is a government IT contractor now and another was, as he claimed, on leave and in the army but that's as close as they get to any affiliation with us. Except for the last one."

Stacy looked to the final page and found a report on her sexual activity. Both the active part and the absence of such a thing before less than a year ago, up until a few months after she turned eighteen. Not that the report had the correct birthdate. Things she had only told one person. There was no picture or even a name on this part of the report but she knew exactly who had written it.

"Amber." she whispered as she skimmed the file. "I thought she was my friend. She said she had a major report to complete for a psychology project..." she said as she shook her head.

"I spoke with her at length before coming here. And she is your friend. She was - is - quite fond of you. She objected due to your state of mind at the time but the situation was too favorable. Certain people didn't want you going into certain assignments completely inexperienced with men."

"That's sick." she said as she threw the folder down on the table, sat back in her chair and glared at him.

"Yes. Yes, it is. But infinitely better than Agent Peterson's preferred methods. There's nothing magical about being a virgin. It doesn't change who you are before or after. But we prefer to know whether you can or cannot do a thing before we put you in a scenario where you may have to do that thing. It doesn't give anyone license to make you - as you say - perform for their amusement or approval. But even so, I agree with most and prefer that agents in deep cover - male or female - have some degree of comfort with their sexuality. I certainly don't want first times happening in the field. There are too many variables as it is. If you think back on it, I am assured you were not forced into anything other than embracing the effect that you can have on men. And left free to do whatever you liked about that. She lied to you very little. The advice she gave you was both what she would have told a girlfriend and someone entering the type of role for which she was assessing your potential."

"Jesus." she said under her breath as she chewed her lip. She was such a fool. She knew she was being groomed for this. Well, maybe not _this_ but something. She thought back on Tiffany's disappointment that her first sexual experience had essentially been a homework assignment. And that as how she now felt. Her entire sexual awakening and the confidence and control over a small part of her life she had found in it was a lie. She wasn't particularly proud of or particularly ashamed of her choices. It was one small thing she could control in three years of service to uphold her end of a deal the had changed substantially without her knowledge and provided an escape from dark thoughts threatening to overwhelm her.

But, as she opened her mouth to say so she realized that it was true. She hadn't been forced into anything. The participants had not been plants or set-ups of any kind. At the end of the day she hadn't done anything she hadn't wanted to at the time. The only new information was that her actions had been encouraged for a reason other than - or in addition to - a friendly bond and had been monitored.

"So...did I pass?" she said with acid in her voice.

"I think it's important for you to understand _why_ we don't want completely inexperienced agents in the field."

"Please. Dazzle me with bullshit."

The agent resisted the urge to sigh at her perfectly reasonable disdain for him at this moment. "This training is about keeping you alive in some very nasty situations. You _should_ have backup. You _should_ have an exit strategy. You _should_ cut a man's balls off if he tries anything you don't approve of - as you threatened my predecessor with. But sometimes things go wrong. Get out of hand. Go farther than you might like. And you can _not_ lose your composure. Tiffany mentioned that Agent Peterson asked what the most important word in 'Infiltration and Inducement of Enemy Personnel' is..." He paused expectantly.

With a heavy sigh Stacy repeated Agent Peterson's answer to his own question. "Inducement?"

"He would say that. But it is always, always, _always_ 'Enemy'. Any man that you mislead and cannot safely escape from or dispose of has to think you are who you said you were until you can get out or it could be the end of you. Some can be put off and react graciously; some will not. So you must know what you are getting into or be able to size them up quickly to tell the difference. And if things go completely wrong you have to be prepared for the possibility that preserving your cover at all costs is preferable to failing to do so."

Stacy was aghast as she processed the full implications of the suggestion. "That's completely fucked up! Do you even hear yourself? I'm supposed to just let some guy rape me? Lay back and enjoy it?

"If you can't get out cleanly? Yes. Yes, you are. I would never suggest you lay back and enjoy it. Some who have encountered the situation more than they would have liked might say such things to cope. Convince themselves that its just part of their world. But we fully understand that we sometimes ask you to put yourself in a terribly vulnerable situation; one where the possibility exists that an unwanted sexual encounter will become your least horrible option. And worse, you have to keep up the act that you began. You've been though SERE training?"

This was the most honest exchange she had been able to get out of anyone she had encountered at The Facility about something so incredibly distasteful. She wanted him to keep talking - see just how depraved the people she was working for truly were - so she just nodded and he continued. "If you are captured, no matter by whom, you should expect to be disavowed. Then the rules don't apply. If we are talking about anyone who would have honored them anyway. Should you overplay a cover, a target not _knowing_ his advances are unwelcome doesn't make it any easier for you. Any less a rape should it become unavoidable. But finding out that you are not who you say you are may guarantee a far worse fate. Torture, death and likely a far more malicious form of rape.

"It will probably never happen. Not in the role we have in mind for you. And I expect you to do everything in your control so it doesn't happen. Or to use your own judgment in the extremely unlikely scenario that it is your best or only course of action. But you're right, it's the most fucked up thing anyone could ask a woman to do. But that's what this training is meant to make you understand. Its why we have to discuss it rather than thinking it unlikely and hoping for the best. If the most fucked up thing happens, you get out of there alive."

.

* * *

.

They sat silently for a few minutes as the agent let his words sink in even as he knew they were somewhat contrived to maximize an agent's utility. To keep every tactic on the table. As if any rape were less horrible than another. But these were the hairs they were forced to split.

And this was the only reason he had come back to this madhouse. Other instructors unwillingness to be frank with recruits and instead 'teach' superficial 'skills' had resulted in casualty rates twice as high as any of the agents - male and female - that he had trained. The men were too cocky and the women were unprepared. The Director might not like his frankness with recruits but Graham had quite a lot invested in these most recent additions and recalled him after this ugliness with Peterson - the current Director's choice - had both proven him unfit and left him unable to continue.

Stacy took a few sips of her water before speaking. Her thoughts came from an angle he had not expected. "You mentioned my SERE training?"

"Yes."

"And you have these folders on me. Amber's report and the one on my father."

"Yes."

"Since we're being straight with each other - in the interest of full disclosure - what else do you know?"

The agent now saw the attack but believed in being as straight-forward as possible. It maximized his recruit's chances of survival. "I've seen your combat training. Some representative footage was compiled for me to review. I know of your other combat and infiltration training. And, of course, your accomplishments here."

"Why is it that you know more about me than any single person I've encountered in the past three years?"

"As you deduced, the Deputy Director and I have a previous relationship. We've worked together before. He and the Director disagree on this particular training. As disgusting as I may find my predecessor's methods he has been extremely successful in driving those who cannot detach themselves emotionally from certain assignments into lesser roles. He would likely say its for their own good. That they would just get themselves or others killed otherwise. I hate to admit it but he may even be right on some level. He has probably saved a lot of lives but mostly just by keeping people out of the field. There were better ways for him to reach similar conclusions..."

The new instructor looked thoughtful - it would be counterproductive to share that he sometimes doubted his own position on the matter. "...Of course, its equally possible that he bullied certain recruits into roles for which they were not suited and it cost them their lives. And that is why I cannot regard his methods as some sort of means to an end. But Langston's failure to have him removed from the agency entirely makes me think that his methods may not have been as unsanctioned as they may seem."

"Detach yourself emotionally...You mentioned something about roles. What am I being groomed for?"

"Let's talk about both what it is and what it is not. When he recruits, Graham likes to make deals. Give people choices."

"Or the illusion or them."

"Precisely. Even so, we value our highly proficient agents greatly. They represent a significant investment and are difficult to replace. Which means from an equally practical standpoint, we don't want them wasted in long term covers as bed warmers or groupies of some kind. It _has_ been done but it puts them in an unbelievably vulnerable position for little gain. Such interactions rarely yield much value anyway. Now, you may be asked to gain access to an area you would otherwise be unable to enter - to infiltrate it - by enticing or _inducing_ \- someone - in all probability a man - with a perceivable physical attraction to you."

"_Probably_ a man?"

"Yes, well, despite certain juvenile fantasies the alternative is fairly unlikely but, I suppose, possible. Just typical demographics of evil-doers it would seem. But there are a few female heads of certain ruthless criminal organizations."

Stacy was simply shaking her head. "As I said, unlikely. And something I feel no need to indoctrinate you into against your will. I would suggest you use your hesitancy and inexperience as assets if such a situation were to arise. Some overly enthusiastic male agents have found similar thoughts somewhat sobering... But back to the point, whether inducement is the best or only means of infiltration is something that will usually be discussed ahead of time or generally left to your judgment. You may occasionally determine it to be a viable tactic in improvisational scenarios. But how far you allow that interaction to progress is entirely up to you...assuming you are one of these highly valued agents."

The man shifted uncomfortably as he began to describe other roles. "We have also been known to position ourselves as rivals of targets, give minimal instruction to professional...companions...point them in the right direction and see what they bring back to us."

"Hookers? You trust intelligence work to hookers?"

"Yes. Prostitutes or escorts. Just not the ones who make more than you and I combined. If they try to betray us and play double agent it's pretty obvious, assuming the original target doesn't kill them outright. But if they show particular initiative or other promise we begin teasing out whether they are really content with their lifestyle. If they show interest in changing their circumstances we...maximize their potential. A finishing school of a sort. Then they owe us a prescribed period of time, usually three years. Their pay is withheld until the end of that time period - much like your pay until you complete your training - unless there are other concerns such as caring for family - and then vocational training of their choice is provided. Most fell into their lives due to lack of options or unfortunate circumstances. We give them an irresistible option."

"You're real social activists. They just trade their pimp for a new pimp."

"We each have something the other wants. Far better than coercing such a thing, as has been done in the past. That doesn't elicit much loyalty. And we generally ask them to simply establish themselves in and move in certain social circles. Keep them apprised of targets and intelligence objectives. They know what to do from there and make their own judgments. It's no charity. They assume a lot of risk."

"And how many get to the end of the rainbow?"

"Maybe twenty percent. Probably less. It's usually drugs. We rehab those who seem salvageable but lose more than we would like to their addictions. Often it's getting caught in some sort of infighting, uprising or turf war. Many are discovered to be spies and become the cautionary tales we hope to prevent you from becoming. But the point is, if the best option is 'send someone to sleep with this guy on the off chance she hears something of value', we have other - better suited and less wasteful - options."

"So you're not asking me to be some sort of government whore?"

"No. And I dislike that term no matter where our agent comes from. Just because they don't have your skill set and have come to accept being devalued in such a way as their lot in life doesn't make them less significant. At least to me. I want you all to get to the end of whatever rainbow you have in mind. And I know that most of you won't."

She felt a little sheepish after his reaction to the faceless women she had unfairly judged. But, unless it was an act, he seemed to care about the agents - of either kind or anywhere in between - that he had lost. "And the emotional detachment you mentioned? You don't really expect someone who hasn't already lowered themselves..." at a stern look from the man she amended her comment "...someone who hasn't had their options reduced to... doing things like that to just allow that to happen, do you?"

"Whether the worst of the situations we are discussing ever comes to pass, you will see and do things you would rather not think yourself capable of. It's best if you _don't_ see yourself as the one who did those things. Whatever it takes to remove yourself - your true self - from the emotional fallout of that... Be it losing yourself in a cover identity or hardening yourself with whatever psychological armor you can muster, keep the core of yourself hidden away. We are not having a discussion about whether particular tactics are right or wrong but rather whether you can accept the risk of them and manage those situations appropriately. Whether the situation you seem most concerned about degrades to that point is largely a function of how effective you are at every other part of your job and an unfortunate reliance on luck. But if the worst should happen you simply _must_ be prepared. Unfortunately, I find myself agreeing with my predecessor - your life may depend upon it."

"Every other part of my job...What is my job supposed to look like?"

"I've discussed your training thus far with Langston and although there are any number of avenues that should be available to you, there is only one in which he is interested. You have more than sufficient qualifications to be a linguist, perhaps a role in basic reconnaissance, a few other specialized roles - but you have been groomed to be the ultimate weapon for any conceivable situation and it is unlikely that our superiors will accept anything less as a successful outcome. They at least want you in the field in some capacity rather than not at all."

She hated the man who had so cruelly tested a woman she barely knew a few weeks ago. Who had successfully identified and exploited her fears. But it would all be for nothing if they deemed her unfit because of it - if some fucking shrink told them she was now somehow damaged. Tiffany had convinced this new agent that she was fit to continue and Stacy found she didn't want to give up her goal just yet either so she bottled up the rest of her anger and saved it for another time.

Stacy didn't want to risk her candidacy any further and wasn't entirely sure she had convinced him so she attempted to redirect the conversation. "You feel very strongly about all this."

"Yes, I do. Nothing about this part of the life we have chosen is the game that many make it out to be. The version in the movies is insulting. There are those who think, since you have to go through the training anyway, that an instructor may as well force you to deal with certain situations. Throw you in the deep end, so to speak. I find that incredibly disrespectful to our recruits. You are being asked to deal with very difficult and you alone will have to live with those decisions beyond the mission outcomes. You should have some say in how that is accomplished."

"You know more about me than anyone but your friend Graham. Do _you_ think I can do it? Be a successful agent, I mean?" It hadn't escaped her notice that he had kept to his topic of choice but she wanted to hear his opinion of her. And in this moment of vulnerability the agent knew something he had suspected since she had walked into the room - there was no way this woman was twenty-one years old. It made what he had to say next unbelievable despite having seen the evidence.

"Myself, Graham, Gunny...even Peterson...none of us need a psychiatrist to tell us certain things about you. You're an incredibly driven young lady. Trained in near seclusion for nearly three years. It would seem that in every area in which you were perceived to have potential you exceeded everyone's expectations. Master of multiple martial arts, multiple weapons, infiltration skills, assault tactics, languages, etcetera, etcetera. You've even run a few basic missions during that time - already done things I doubt half of your fellow recruits will _ever_ do..." Here he paused again for effect.

"...What _wouldn't_ you do to achieve your objective? It is likely that a woman as clever and as beautiful as you can often find alternatives to actually having sexual contact with a mark. The remaining question is this: if you have no better choice - if your life or lives of others hang in the balance - can you control a situation that turns your stomach? At least we can conduct your training in a controlled environment. Not for our own amusement like Agent Peterson seemed to think was his right, but to make sure there are no cracks in your facade that might get you killed."

He paused again before asking "Do you wish to proceed?"

Stacy leaned back in her own chair with her right arm holding her water glass and dangling casually over the arm rest - her right ring finger tapping against the side - as she thought about the path that had brought her to this place.

A childhood of ill-gotten gains and deception; a period in high school that was both too short and too long - never finding her place; attempting in vain to fit in with her peers only to be ostracized, taunted by both male and female classmates and to earn a diploma for a girl that no longer existed; a college career far from the norm completely devoid of frat parties or mixers or whatever the hell normal boys and girls did when freed of their parents supervision and imbibing inadvisable quantities of alcohol; a brief period of exploring her interest in men finding nothing particularly fulfilling beyond the physical or worthy of sacrificing her potential to pursue further; a successful training period where she discovered any number of skills that she would never get to fully utilize unless she continued her training to its completion...

She didn't have any purpose other than the one that awaited her at the end of this path and realized for the first time that Graham had known that all along. 'A weapon' the agent had called her. For all her grandiose ideas of being a force for change in the world she now realized something she should have realized from the start. That she was now just a tool of people in positions of power and had to trust that the purposes she was used for were right and just.

She had spent three years digging her own grave. And wasn't it pretty? With perfect corners and sheer sides and nary a handhold to pull herself out.

She dropped her chin and sighed. "I don't have anywhere else to go, do I? There's nowhere I can run?"

The man contemplated this answer for a moment. And he was surprised to find himself saddened that he had no lifeline to offer this powerful and beautiful lost soul in front of him.

"No." He responded simply and honestly. "The options I mentioned are extremely unlikely. There's something else going on with regard to your training that they haven't shared with me. Something unique. Most recruits train for a few months to evaluate their potential before coming here. You've been groomed for nearly three years with a wider variety of skills than I've ever seen. They want their agent. And now that you're in - seen what you have seen - you're right. There's nowhere you can run. Not from us."

Two words stirred something in her. He was smooth but she had seen better. She had done better. But the word 'agent' made her realize that he wasn't just _an_ agent, he was _their_ agent - their representative - sent to do their bidding - to get her to do what they want. The word 'us' that he would be on their side if she didn't follow their plan. Perhaps reluctantly, but still against her and she desperately needed someone who wasn't against her. So she felt a sudden need to be very clear about what it was that 'they' wanted.

"We've only talked about extremes. There's a scenario we haven't discussed isn't there?

"Let's consider our friend Tiffany. She had something at stake and she made a choice." Stacy was visibly angered by that so he rushed to make his point. "It didn't make it any less a rape. Any less a violation. Any less damaging to her. Not fighting back to avoid being beaten to death or otherwise harmed later doesn't signify consent. A battered woman who gives in to a violent lover so he wont beat her children doesn't absolve her rapist. Her sacrifice was more abstract. She made a sacrifice to get here and he threatened to take it all away. She didn't want to lose what was dear to her or see her brother's sentence carried out and, unfortunately, didn't think she had anyone to turn to. She thought he had more power than he did and chose to make what she felt was a necessary sacrifice.

"You saw through him. Or chose to fall on your sword. He threatened your investment - all of your hard work, all of your sacrifices - so you could go on to become someone who _can_ make a difference in the world. But if you had not seen through him or he did have that power or worse, what would you do so that the life you had sacrificed so much for wouldn't be taken away from you. Even as you planned your eventual revenge on him for forcing that choice on you."

Although the fire in her eyes had not faded, he was relieved that she was still listening intently and so he pressed on. "This is not a rational discussion. These are not choices either you or Tiffany should have to face in the real world. But it _is_ how circumstances occasionally ask our agents to weigh the risks and benefits and act accordingly. As far as she knew, the choice Tiffany made only impacted her and her brother. It was no choice at all really, so she endured what she had to in order to protect what was dear to her. What if the next time the choice means saving a partner's life? A hundred innocent lives? A thousand? Millions? In such an incredibly unlikely scenario, could you make such a choice for them?"

"Spread your legs and save the world?" she sarcastically offered.

"That particular recruiting poster was rejected. It's not meant to be a _real_ scenario. It's meant to establish - well ahead of time - what you would and would not do to achieve a mission based on your knowledge of the importance of that mission. You have probably already considered the notion of sacrificing your life for something greater than yourself. How would you approach a situation where the sacrifice was only slightly less disquieting and definitely less permanent?"

Stacy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She stood there with her eyes closed breathing deeply and calming herself for what seemed to be a long time. It was a difficult possibility to fathom so she dreamed up a ridiculous scenario. Sleep with an evil man with access to something as menacing as a nuclear bomb or bioweapon - and there was no other way to characterize it - allow him to rape her and pretend to be an enthusiastic participant - and protect millions of people by doing so. Or refuse to do so and _hope_ he could be stopped in some other way.

And worst of all, learn to live with herself if the other way did not work. Spend her life wishing the choice had been posed to a braver, more selfless woman than herself.

Stacy realized in that moment that the gears of the machine she had willingly plugged herself into had ground up any number of potential agents and kept chugging along. Asking unreasonable sacrifices of well-meaning people. Or thrill-seeking adventurers. And she saw a little of both in herself.

And they were all either truly weak under all their bravado and bluster or truly the strong people you wanted making life and death decisions. Her new instructor had identified what she saw as two possible scenarios that could be used to justify or discredit Peterson's barbaric methods: weak people who were identified by those methods as weak, or weak people who he failed to identify - who were able to minimally get by only to later fail in the field.

But what about the strong ones? Was Peterson just - until meeting her - that good at identifying those he could manipulate? Surely some were strong enough to stand up to his bullying threats; his own rape under the guise of training. Those who chose to walk out despite the threatened consequences as she had considered doing over the course of this conversation and Tiffany had likely been wishing she had done a few weeks ago. If it were someone like Peterson making the decisions, were those potential agents considered lost causes? Strong minded and unwilling to compromise? Moved into lesser roles because they wouldn't play along? Weren't they the strong ones whose hands you would hope the fate of the world rested in?

And what about the ones who still saw the value of the job for which they were being trained? Who saw it through despite the required sacrifices? If Tiffany had any sort of sexual experience at all before coming here maybe she wouldn't have been singled out. Wouldn't have been subjected to Peterson's so-called remedial training. Wouldn't the potential agents not subjected to Peterson's personal attention still possibly have the same things expected of them in the field? What about those who came from the sex trade? Would they be better able to deal with such situations? What if they were the strong ones? The survivors.

Her attempted rapist had likely been systematically doing the same thing to women in her position in the name of making them more pliant to the potential requirements of future missions for years. Even if he reserved his personal attention for the less experienced women - preying on their insecurities to expediently cull out those who could not suppress their disgust with that act - though clearly that was not his only motivation - the fact that she was beginning to understand the purpose didn't soften her outrage at his methods. If anything it intensified it. And her new instructor had made an intriguing suggestion. A very intriguing suggestion. Maybe one day she _would_ cross paths with him again and have her revenge for attempting to force the choice on her and successfully doing so to countless others now that she better understood the full magnitude of his betrayal.

This wasn't something she _wanted_ to do but she suspected it wasn't the only thing an agent would find themselves doing that they considered distasteful. 'Moral flexibility' Graham had called it when he recruited the child con artist and found her skills in many areas exceeded all expectations. Surely there was strength of a different kind in such a thing - in doing what had to be done. Would she really feel better about herself should she avoid such a repulsive situation and, in doing so, indirectly allow people to die?

Her former instructor's approach was obviously not their preferred approach to bring her to this point or they wouldn't be scrambling to control the damage like they were. But Stacy knew she could never live with such an outcome and ruefully admitted to herself that they had her pegged from Day One.

_What wouldn't she do?_

This new teacher had laid it all out for her in a way that made her fully understand what it could mean and the situations she may find herself in. She appreciated that approach even more knowing the methods of his predecessor. No matter how far-fetched - if it were the only way - if lives depended on it - well, then she better damn well know what she was doing. Just having the option in her arsenal didn't mean she had to use it; that it was all she was capable of or all that she was.

As he watched her thinking, Stacy's new mentor knew the very moment when she had decided. He could see her lips tremble almost imperceptibly and a bit of moisture reveal itself in the corner of her eye. When she opened her eyes she pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to hide the wiping away of any dampness in her eyes. When she fixed her eyes on his they were harder than before. Her mind was made up and her still conflicted feelings on the matter had been hidden away. "OK..." She didn't take this lightly. She didn't like it at all. But there was still a chance she could both live an exciting life of purpose _and_ keep her father out of prison. "...I'm in. What's next?"

He had been relatively confident of her answer but was pleased and relieved nonetheless. This was a formidable woman in front of him. He wasn't asking anything of her that he had not done himself a hundred times but knew it was far more traumatic, humiliating and dangerous for his female counterparts. They were among the bravest people he knew to engage in such tactics to _any_ degree when they felt the benefits outweighed their own sacrifice.

It was just so different for male agents. Occasionally the experience had not been entirely distasteful but it usually was to at least some degree. But still easy compared to what he had come to somewhat understand from female agents. Even the few occasions - _far_ more often for men - when the regret was that although the interactions had started out based on deception they had turned into something very real. They were lucky to have her and he was glad that Peterson's questionable methods hadn't alienated her completely. He leaned forward and offered what little solace he could.

"What's next is that I teach you how to _never_ allow yourself to be put in that situation again unless you _choose_ to because you deem something else more important than yourself."

.

* * *

.

Stacy felt herself breathe when he said that. It would still be her choice. She still had the power. And she would never let anyone take that from her. Even if convincing herself that the choice is hers is just a psychological trick she plays on herself. Any choices that presented themselves later had probably already been made just now, in this room. The only decision in the future would be on which side of that line the specific situation fell.

"Firstly, I want to earn your trust. But I will tell you now that you are completely safe in this office. To start, we will be mostly talking about various scenarios. Frankly and without judgment. Nothing remotely close to what happened here before will ever happen again."

She had already decided _that_ for herself. Anyone trying to coerce her into such a thing again would end up bargaining for their lives - or at least for keeping their favorite body parts intact. She wouldn't let them off as easily as she had Agent Peterson.

"Second, know that you will rarely if ever be ordered to sleep with someone although it will often be apparent that it is considered a possibility you will not ignore and may even be strongly implied. You will have an objective to achieve and will have some latitude in how you achieve it. I will teach you how to assess a mark and determine what is necessary and what possible alternatives exist. If men seem to be easy marks its because they usually are. Sex - or the promise of it - is often the most expedient way to gain their confidence. Sometimes expediency is necessary. Other times a lazy agent might use that as a crutch. But it is not the only way."

Again, she had a choice. She had power. She wasn't lazy and didn't want to use sex as her go to weapon. She reluctantly accepted it had to be in her arsenal but if there was another way, she would find it.

"With that in mind, it's important to always be aware that if you choose to employ sex under false pretenses to help achieve your objective - to deceive an evil man - or even encourage the affections of such a man - he will likely react very, very poorly to discovering the truth. What may seem to some to be the easy way is often the most dangerous. We also have ways to create a believable impression of certain activities for the weak minded in certain scenarios. There are ways to stay the night and make your apologies in the morning while sacrificing very little."

Stacy had no intention of ever staying the night with a mark but knew that many of her intentions no longer mattered. She just hoped she never had to find out what it was like trying to sleep next to a man who - if he found out who you truly were - may see to it that you awake chained to a wall or simply kill you in your sleep.

"Third, you mustn't worry about what other people may think or your preconceived notions of what is and is not acceptable behavior. This training is no different than the real world in that the male agents who behave a certain way are congratulated by their male peers and revel in getting to play the role of the super spy or international man of intrigue. Female agents are often the subjects of ridicule for doing _exactly_ what their male counterparts have done. It is completely unfair, but also a stigma that negatively affects some female agents. It is best if you can learn not to care what anyone thinks of this part of your life as an agent."

Stacy thought about that for a moment. She had little regard for people, particularly men, who didn't take her seriously. She had felt that way even as a child, when she had been dismissed lurking in the shadows of her father's business dealings trusted to watch for any double-crosses by listening to foolish men who assumed she only spoke English or didn't comprehend their small-minded schemes. She had felt that way when she had tried to play by everyone else's rules in high school and in her very limited personal interactions during her training over the last three years. She had decided on the course of her life and now she had decided to continue with this training despite attempts to manipulate her by her former instructor. Having survived all of that, she couldn't envision a scenario where she would ever give a damn what anyone else thought of any of the things she may have to do to survive in the role she had chosen.

"And, if one day you are able to use any of this training in your personal life then I am glad you were able to benefit practically from it in some way. But those are not the types of encounters I need to observe. I need to see you in situations that are uncomfortable to you. If you were to find yourself enjoying this - and some agents do - I wouldn't think less of you but we would not have achieved our objective. In fact there are a few agents who simply find nothing objectionable about it. They convince themselves that they are in control and that the joke is on their mark. In some ways they are the easiest pupils because they don't need to separate themselves from the situation. In other ways they are the hardest to train because if we cannot find a scenario that disturbs them in some way then we cannot assess their ability to effectively conceal their disgust when they do encounter an objectionable situation.

"Ms. Mills, I'm afraid that means you aren't done with tests...certain very unconventional tests. I can understand you thinking that perhaps where Peterson chose to abuse these training sessions for his own pleasure perhaps I am doing the same thing but derive my enjoyment from watching. I assure you that couldn't be farther from the truth. You're not really my type anyway."

Stacy couldn't even bring herself to pretend to be embarrassed any more. Her world had changed. The rules had changed. Or her perception of the rules was now more accurate. Yet her new instructor had managed to finally put her at ease despite what was apparently to come and her dreadful expectations of what she had been walking into this evening. The fact that he had decided to be a little bit cheeky with her led her to think that he was ready to stop coddling her and get to the task at hand.

She smiled at him for the first time to encourage him to continue. Having now seen it, her new instructor was somewhat stunned. Something that rarely happened anymore. She was undeniably beautiful. Training her to seduce a mark wasn't going to be a problem. It was training her to school her emotions in the moment and to live with herself afterward that now consumed his thoughts.

"I don't do this for my personal amusement. The situations you will encounter here are the least sensual I can imagine knowing as I do that you would rather not be touched at all. I will instruct you, _in theory_, on certain techniques - both physical and psychological - with which you are likely unfamiliar. I will not touch you without your permission but do not expect to have to do so. I also intend to bring in two experienced female field agents who I know and trust to work with you more practically on certain approaches and techniques and discuss some things that may be a bit embarrassing for you.

"We will have to arrange a few encounters - far from here - the more uncomfortable the better - so that you can practice getting through them without tipping anyone off. They couldn't be any less sensual to someone in my position as an observer but I cannot emphasize enough that I will be looking for any interactions where you are unconvincing in any way. Most will be limited to coercion but a few will have to be more...practical...in nature. Nothing extreme, just...practice. We will set the line that will not be crossed before you begin. We tend to frequent trade conventions and target individuals who are suspicious of industrial espionage - companies revealing new products - for our final evaluations. It's the closest we can get to real spy work but with lessened danger to our trainees. Often we have the option of drugging our targets before things go too far. I don't think it will be necessary to pair you with anyone completely grotesque."

Stacy smiled again at that snarky sense of humor. She did, however, take a moment to absorb this concept of tests. The practical reality wasn't as daunting anymore - she had numbed herself to it - her ability to compartmentalize would serve her well. But it seemed she would have to convincingly play many roles to her new instructor's satisfaction and at least one of those roles would likely involve getting pretty uncomfortably close to having sex with a man she would ordinarily prefer not to - and at the moment that was all of them - or at least engaging in some degree of intimate contact without betraying her reluctance.

Logically she understood - they couldn't risk the failure of a major operation on her ability to be convincing in such a situation without having assessed her for themselves in a similar situation - but it didn't make it any more palatable. As little as she was looking forward to this course of action she at least believed this man would try to make the experience as manageable as possible.

"I think that's enough for this evening. I will be adjusting everyone's schedules and deferring most of the training for the more... experienced... women to my colleagues for the most part. You and your peers with more actual espionage training we will be working with as a team as I have just described. Do you have any questions for me?"

"No, that was a hell of a speech."

"Well, I've had much more time to consider the topic."

Stacy rose and extended her hand and the agent rose from his seat. "I just want to thank you for at least being honest with me." She appreciated his professionalism - or what passed for professionalism in this bizarre situation - and offered her hand in an implicit admission that they had not gotten off to a very professional start. "You're the first person who has been, Agent...?"

He took her offered right hand and bent at the waist in a very formal fashion to apply a stage kiss - going through the motions bringing his mouth just above the back of her hand without actually making contact. He straightened and finally made his introduction. "Montgomery. Special Agent Roan Montgomery. And you are most welcome, my dear. You'll think about this tonight and think what a mad world you've found yourself in. I'll do everything in my power to make this process as minimally uncomfortable as possible. But I'm afraid minimal in this case may still be substantial."

He added a second hand on top of the hand he was already holding and looked at her warmly when he said "I am truly sorry for what happened to you here. No one should be subjected to that regardless of how worldly or experienced they are. However, now that you are here you have very few options. No one gets this far in their training and just walks away. Regardless of how it could have happened once you arrived here, you would eventually have had to prove - or at least test - your ability to successfully execute this type of mission. We simply cannot risk an important mission on skills that we have not observed."

"I understand. I do. I don't like it and I can't promise I won't object to anything you haven't told me yet but I'll do my best. And, for the record, this is without a doubt the weirdest conversation I've ever had..."

"A distinction I hold with many young women, I'm afraid."

.

* * *

.

Stacy smiled as she left to contemplate tonight's unexpected revelations. Roan Montgomery watched the door until the green light went out indicating that the recruit he knew as Stacy Mills had left the annex and entered another part of the Facility. He turned and filled a glass with clear liquid from a crystal decanter, drained it in one gulp and filled it again before gathering the files and returning to his desk chair.

As he sipped this next drink he thought of all the agents before who he had done his best to train but had made some tiny misstep that had cost their lives - usually after an eternity of pain. He didn't want to do this any more. Line them up for the slaughter. See them panic and sacrifice too much of themselves. See them do everything right and die anyway. Convince these practical children to do - or at least entertain the notion of doing - the foulest things imaginable. Know they would one day look back on a similar conversation as the beginning of the end. Make a wrong choice and begin a fight they couldn't finish or have to live with a missed opportunity to spare others any suffering. And knowing that the worst was yet to come. Graham had confided in him that he was reinstituting certain tests for his agents beyond the topic of the evening.

He was two for two. More meat for the grinder. And yet - like the agents he convinced to trust him willingly took that burden onto themselves - he didn't trust anyone else to do it. Felt he gave them their best chance of survival until they could rise above their agent status. Maybe a few would make it out alive. And forgive him for the rest.

He didn't know how long he had starred into space when the light above the door turned green again. He stashed the empty glass in a desk drawer as the door to his office tentatively opened and he stood with his best most charming and approachable smile.

"Please, come in my dear. Have a seat so we can get acquainted..."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: As if you didn't know it was Roan...

When the movie _Starship Troopers_ came out (bear with me, like Chuck, I have a point, I swear!) - as campy as it was - I was intrigued to learn it was based on a novel. Upon reading the novel I was surprised to find that it had very little to do with the movie I had seen. Instead it was a philosophical discussion of the concepts of a meritocracy of citizenship, entitlement, practicality vs honor, a view of responsibility similar to (but pre-dating ) _Spiderman_, corporal punishment, etc., all set forth as the generally accepted dogma of the fictional future society depicted. It was also mostly set in flashbacks to classroom discussion of those issues (in a class called _History and Moral_ _Philosophy_) against the backdrop of the present day intergalactic warfare focused on in the movie.

It's also criticized as a militaristic, fascist, racist depiction of a propped-up dystopian utopia and while I find the arguments interesting I do not necessarily find them desirable or agree with them. But as I wrote this chapter I realized it was essentially the same thing - making arguments to suit the situation.

So the premise - in both that case and here - asks the reader to suspend disbelief and accept the fictional universe and also apply constructs that will not hold up in the real world to that universe NOT accept the arguments as valid in the real world.

If anything this chapter is meant to emphasize that - even when used frivolously - _especially_ when used frivolously - these scenarios carry unspoken horrors and the threats of worse for those involved. If you're going to include such plot devices I think there is an obligation to consider and portray why someone would make such a sacrifice and the damage that resulted from it or led to it; not ignore the impacts that might have on their life rather than the shallow portrayal that it is something blithely accepted or worse enjoyed as part of some deviant game.

I can really bring down a room, huh? But now you know when I eventually introduce or adapt those canon situations there are additional connotations beyond the contrivances needed to hit the canon marks.

Thanks for slogging through this with me. We'll see Chuck again before the end of the next installment! (pinky promise!)

.

* * *

.

The Snap Cup: After ten 'chapters' (or 26 by my count), I am humbled by the fact that readers have left over 200 reviews for my rambling story / collection of stories (Snaps for me!) in what most would say is a dwindling fandom. Special thanks to my extra diligent reviewers who comment on every chapter.

I also love seeing an alert that end with the words: "This message has been truncated due to length..."; that so many of you see so much that you find worthy of commentary. Your enthusiasm is infectious and your insights and suggestions are inspiring.

I look forward to hearing what all of you think of each offering and enjoy our side discussions immensely.

Snaps for you all!


	12. XII: False Pretenses

...after confronting some disagreeable aspects of her job our young protagonist completes the associated training as elements of Project Omaha are fine-tuned and she considers the effect it will have on her later life; later in her career she confronts the difficulties of separating reality from the cover...

Canon Reference: End of the non-canon flashback arc from the previous installments before returning to canon events toward the end of 'Tango' (Ep. 1.03)

Content: Three chapters; the first is tiny (tiny for me anyway, fewer than 1,400 words - I've written longer _notes_ \- basically saying 'time passes' and showing some of the psychological impacts of it via a ton of allegory and similes but spawned from a prior failure to explain something minor; don't ask me why it's in second person - I have no f'n idea what I'm doing...).

The other two are longish; the first of the two (6,200 words) wrapping up our detour into seduction training (the theme will come up again in the future but not to this extent) and then, finally, the second of the two (5,600 words) begins to show what this all means to the agent in Burbank with a slight rewrite of a canon scene...

A/N: Who would have guessed that the arc covering 'Tango' would have clocked in at well over 50K words (some of it actually story and not just rambling notes)? Probably the same people who would have guessed it would include a major multi-chapter sidebar exploring the awfulness that is seductions. The topic will come up again but now that we have established the rules of the road - and everyone has had a chance to shower - it won't require such an extensive exposition. Hopefully, I have made and will make something resembling a point with it all.

The last two installments were mentally exhausting for me; sorry if you felt the same. (Bad News) The mood will remain pretty dark for a few more installments but (Good News) lighten a bit relatively soon.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: I've neglected to say it but still not making a penny! (And I don't caaaaare!) No ownership of CHUCK, _Tron_, _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_, _Tomb_ _Raider_, the wit and witticism of Groucho Marx, American Girl (not the super-awesome Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song but rather the super-creepy dolls - sorry, cute idea but they're creepy) is asserted or implied.

Oh, and I mentioned the unintentional similarities of The Facility to _Nikita_ last time, then I recently watched _Ender's Game_ and chortled when he was told to 'follow the green lights'...there truly is 'nothing new under the sun' (itself not new...Ecclesiastes 1:9).

.

* * *

Part XII: False Pretenses

* * *

.

028: Two Hundred

The Facility, Training Room, August 2001

.

You rarely spar anymore. Can't draw even more attention to yourself than you did on arrival. Maybe there's just no one left to fight.

You study and study at the tiny desk in your room, sometimes interrupted only by meals and physical training; fewer and fewer training sessions, more and more offsite missions. Procedures and protocol. Strategy and tactics. Mission specs from declassified operations and, later, from more recent operations; missions both successful and disastrous. Any scrap of information that will keep you alive. Learn from someone else's mistakes.

Roan insisted on fingerless gloves - don't show the raw, ripped and calloused evidence of your strength. He'd rather you reshape your body into something softer. Less obviously powerful. Reshape it again, differently than you have thus far. But you like it hard and sleek and strong. Your closest layer of armor within your very skin.

Gunny made his endorsement of that philosophy clear. He wants you even stronger. His contribution was a new, bigger hunk of iron - nine pounds heavier - over a quarter of your body weight - with a simple smiley face this time and a predictable phrase on the other side.

_Have a nice day._

Warm up before you begin in earnest; like the rest of your seemingly endless training, practice before the real thing.

Grip it, set your feet and stand before you exhale a deep breath as you bend at the waist. Hike it like a football and then whip it forward as you stand upright with every bit of your hamstrings, ass and hips. Shoulders and arms just along for the ride. Like you - a passenger in your own life.

Let it float in front of you until gravity regains control. After a few of those, add a crank at the top, pulling it to your ear as you rise. Like trying to start that shitty lawn mower you had when you were almost fifteen.

A little over four years ago. A lifetime ago. Think of it as spy college and you're at the top of your class. Nearly ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

You learn how to maximize your beauty and what to do when you are noticed. And how to hide it. Blend in. _Not_ be noticed. Some of it goes along with what you learned - and know you can do - from when you were a child. Leave your indignation and disgust at the door. Wear your mask of vapid conversation, flirtatious attention and exaggerated mirth. Hide your intelligence, your purpose and your disdain. You keep what you can use and discard the rest.

Like everything else that just falls away you let the bell fall again and again. Then add the twist. Before it reaches your ear, flip your wrist and punch it to the ceiling. Letting your wrist and the hunk of iron dance around each other without colliding violently.

The attack that goes unnoticed. You were never here.

Pull, twist and punch with a powerful whipping motion until every part of your hamstrings, back, biceps and shoulders come alive.

Montgomery is true to his word. His instruction is disgusting and respectful at the same time. As much as it can be. He and his... Assistants? Colleagues? Team? ...correct gently; they know what they are asking.

You spend most days trapped in your box but you frequently get the type of 'hall pass' that Gunny once mentioned. Several days in some destination location milling among the oblivious. Awkward conversations and even more awkward instruction. Staged encounters and observations. Polite, apologetic extraction when your evaluators have seen enough.

A touch and a kiss become something repulsive but necessary. Never much beyond that, just enough to make it all seem worthless - tainted - and an icy shell begins to form around your heart. The beginnings of the armor with which Roan and his co-instructors suggest you gird yourself.

Pull. Twist. Punch. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

You wake up one morning to the noxious smell you encountered twice before. It fills the air pumped through the vents of your locked room. A wet towel does nothing to help. Only ceasing to breathe would be an option. A voice over an open intercom asks your name. Stacy Mills is not the answer he wants as he asks again and again.

He told you it was coming but hadn't discussed it since. Fair warning was obviously out of the question. This is not a drill.

Eventually you throw every name you ever had at him. It's not your fault he doesn't know the real answer when it slips out unbidden, camouflaged within the many girls and women you have been in your life. The name you haven't used since you were seven years old. You only speak it that one time. Never again as this becomes at least a daily occurrence. You may not want to be Stacy Mills but you want to be that shattered little girl even less and retreat into your own mind.

Stacy Mills. Stacy Mills. Stacy Mills. Once he is satisfied that you believe it the smell changes. Or an injection administered through a port in the wall of a mercilessly white room.

Begin again.

Meaningless repetition. You can barely feel anything anymore and Stacy Mills is just as good a name as any other.

Pause as you lock your elbow to rest with your iron companion dangling over your head in the cradle of your open palm. Breathe deep before you begin in earnest. Now pull hard to start it all again. Gravity is too slow. It is not your friend, rising or falling. You can't depend on anything - even the most fundamental laws of nature - to help you. To be there when you need it. Its all on you.

Drop it as you bend - not to the floor - swinging through your legs to begin again and pull with all your might.

A few minor missions. Things you've done before. Under CIA tutelage or that of your father. Stealth and infiltration. Acrobatic break-ins. Talking your way into places you don't belong. Sneaking in through service doors with pick pocketed keys and key cards. Flirting and conning. Things you once thought you were done with. Unlike before, you have now been shot at on four separate occasions.

Childhood mayhem amplified for a deadly world. When you laughed at the guards firing at you, you wondered if you were going mad.

Already sweating, you set the thirty-five pounds of iron on the ground so you can start the timer. Relieved briefly of your burden but not for long. You're only beginning.

...Hike. Swing. Crank. Twist. Punch. Pull. Drop. Hike...

Economy of movement, grace meets raw power. Every fiber of your being engaged in the fight. Two hundred in ten minutes means one every three seconds. Every three seconds or you're done for.

200...

199...

198...

The counter counts up but you count down. Switch hands mid-swing when your grip is nearly gone. But don't stop.

145...

144...

Never stop.

Your countdown and the counter on the wall have to converge at 100 before the five-minute mark or it's hopeless.

You separate your mind from the task. Steel yourself against the pain. The fatigue. The heat and perspiration become a nuisance. You use your training to counter your environment and visualize the room freezing over. Ice crystals spidering across the glass. That you can see your own breath. Sometimes you can feel the gooseflesh from the imaginary cold.

The five-minute mark passes without note. There is only the rhythm. The grind.

You'll be done here soon. You can feel it. Something lurking just out of view.

A lifetime set out before you in ten minute increments wondering if you'll live to see the next one.

You layer your armor yourself against them, each step toward impending doom more chilling than the last. You may never be warm again.

But the cold comes from within now rather than from without. And cold isn't cold, it's the absence of heat. The absence of pain. The absence of feeling. Things of no use to you.

When the buzzer sounds, if you were to look - if you were to care - the counter reads 212.

Each as meaningless as the last as you leave the room for your next training, your next mission.

This place has had its intended effect. You no longer plan your day, just follow the lights, do what you're told and accept the truth.

It never ends.

.

* * *

.

029: Graduation Day

Bloomington, MN; Aug 23, 2001 11:05 am

.

Special Agent Roan Montgomery was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair at a too-small table on the third level of the Mall of America food court waiting for the remarkable young woman about to join the ranks of the elite among covert operatives. Women that a more sentimental man would consider with almost familial affection. But not him. Not knowing what awaited her. Knowing her likely fate. And his role in plunging her into a life she likely would not survive. Something he had thought of many who had come before.

He taught them all he knew and left it to them to apply it well. Things a man with any true emotion would rather die than impose on anyone he loved. He would likely be seeing her for the last time soon and simply hoped he had sufficiently prepared her for the world she was about to enter and hadn't damaged her too badly by doing so.

He didn't notice her approach until the small handheld device she had been sent to retrieve clattered across the surface of the table. He turned to see her smiling widely at her success, pursing her lips cheekily when he turned to look at her. She had snuck up on him despite the fact that he was expecting her. She was truly remarkable.

The target was a prototype miniaturized touchscreen device that a northern California technology company was developing. Several executives from Roark industries were in town for a trade show at the Minneapolis Convention Center and Agent Montgomery's protégé was tasked with determining which of the four men or two women was in possession of the device, gaining access to them - and to it - _specifically_ by seducing the identified target and subsequent retrieval of the device while raising minimal suspicion. The government had little use for this specific device other than as a training opportunity. They had already reviewed the patent and design documentation and begun adapting the device for military use.

It wasn't quite the same as a matter of national security but the person responsible for losing the device was likely already fired and probably paying their own way home. As such, it had been a reasonable proxy in terms of the level of suspicion that the person responsible for transport of the device _should_ have felt toward an unknown person. And it was his protégé's task to overcome any such suspicions and achieve her objective.

As Stacy Mills took the seat opposite him, Montgomery noted with some displeasure that she was wearing the same bargain bin business suit he had seen her in yesterday walking the convention floor. "You stayed overnight? That wasn't required." he said without attempting to hide his concern. This mission allowed for keeping up appearances with the use of knockout drugs with lingering euphoric side effects and other tricks of their trade and he knew how much she had hated the more practical elements of her training and evaluation.

"Wanted to see if I could get past it. Stop worrying, he was out cold. Double dose."

"Rather defeats the purpose." He smiled at her - hiding his relief that she wasn't unnecessarily practicing her new skills - and she just shrugged. It didn't rise to the level of a phobia, it was more of a general concern that Stacy had: being able to sleep next to a mark she was in the process of deceiving. She quite appropriately equated it to turning your back on an angry snake and she obviously felt she needed some repetition to build some sort of immunity to her concerns about such situations. "Which one was it?"

"Davis. The CFO."

"Well, that's unfortunate but even more of a success for our purposes."

"Yeah." Stacy sighed "He didn't suspect a thing. Thought he drank himself silly last night on two whole bourbon and cokes. This morning I reminded him of a meeting he mentioned just before he realized the device was missing. I even stayed to help him look for it when he realized it was gone."

"Risky. What if he'd tried to searched you?"

"Wasn't going to happen. But I hid it behind the ice machine two floors up while he was out just in case. I dumped my purse and pretended to be offended. He never thought to accuse me of anything. Shooed me out before he reported it...seemed like a good guy. Like he _was_ a good guy."

Truthfully, only two targets were considered likely to be responsible for transporting the device. The two women and other two men created a complicated, lengthy and uncomfortable scenario for Stacy's evaluation. He was as pleased that she had shown no out of character emotion whatsoever as he was saddened that she now wore the armor they had helped her craft so well.

She had expressed a hope during mission planning that it would have been Steve Fredrickson, the Executive VP of Marketing. They knew that Fredrickson was cheating on his wife and had sold designs to rivals in the past. Knowing that losing this prototype would destroy someone's career Stacy had been much more receptive to being the instrument of Karma for someone she felt deserved it. But as Roan had said, that defeated the purpose. The ripples of their actions would often destroy the lives of others and there was no way to guarantee it would always be someone who deserved it. Destroying a good man's career and marriage instead was just another sacrifice on a slippery slope.

Bob Davis was the only one of the six who seemed to be a fundamentally decent person with no evidence of any untoward activities. For training purposes it was probably best that she had to overcome her sympathies for her target. Agent Montgomery had quickly realized that the main reason she was having some difficulty with the things she was being asked to do was that - despite the implications one could easily draw from her history - _she_ was a fundamentally decent person.

"How do you feel about that?"

Her shrug was the very definition of indifference. "If he was really a good guy I would never have been in his room."

.

* * *

.

Many of her early assessments had been only slightly more physical cons than she had pulled off when she was twelve but the nature of the assessments had escalated in physicality. The parameters were simple - her handlers would scan the room for potentials, run priority checks on them and find the man with the most to lose. One of the handlers would take a run at him to assess whether he was on the prowl or truly a reluctant target. Then Stacy went to work.

Use her training to entice him using every tool in her now extensive repertoire. Get him back to his room and simply maintain some manner of physical contact for five minutes while her team listened in - far longer than she would need to plant a listening device or knock out a real target - before making excuses to leave. One of her team was always ready to forcibly pull her out if things went unexpectedly sour but in those early assessments she never achieved the five minute mark.

Stacy had unexpectedly aborted her first several attempts at what they very clinically referred to as 'practical observation' and was so hesitant in others that Agent Montgomery had been on the verge of recommending against her continued candidacy as much out of concern for her own safety as mission success. That was until Deputy Director Graham had provided a suggestion that had met with some success in her earlier training missions.

Personas. Relatively detailed personality assessments of her chosen alias. Something she could anchor on in order to portray a character on her missions.

Graham provided them in folders even Roan was not cleared to see. The first attempt, a simple training exercise in Las Vegas, was disastrous. The pendulum swung too far in the other direction. She did not report in the next day and when one of Agent Montgomery's colleagues located her she insisted she was the woman whose cover identity she had assumed. That they did not know each other and that she had to be on her way to meet the man she had met and gone out with last night before checking into a hotel under her training alias. She explained that her reservations must have gotten mixed up because the confirmation paper work in her purse was for someone named Stacy Mills.

They initially thought she was pulling a scam on them to somehow invalidate her candidacy or at least eliminate the possibility of seduction missions. A few minutes talking to her raised entirely different concerns. Over the next day or so she seemed to regain her senses - and memories of the missing evening. One of Agent Montgomery's assistants had reported finding her sitting by herself in a hotel stairwell - not crying but certainly not in the best state of mind.

It wasn't that she had done anything horrifyingly obscene - her cover identity apparently wasn't that kind of girl. It was that she had been completely out of control. The woman she had become was intrigued by the man who was essentially a practice target. Actually interested. Actually having a good time. Actually planning and looking forward to seeing him again having forgotten (and not been told by him) that he was married.

The most crippling recollection was that the woman who was not her had actually - for a brief, shining moment - been happy. There was a part of her that didn't want to leave her cover behind.

Graham demanded blood samples and quickly reported that she had, in fact, been slipped something over the course of the evening that none of them had noticed being administered.

Although he reported some sort of date rape drug to Roan and his team, the blood samples were disposed of without testing. Graham knew what really happened. His Cipher team determined that the intensity of their coding was too dense. An agent who didn't remember she was an agent was no use to him whatsoever. Later versions were far more successful.

Her skill at languages was beneficial but not uncommon - to a lesser degree - for any agent and her athletic ability was previously unknown and therefore a pleasant surprise but Graham cited her innate ability to 'become someone else' as the primary reason for her recruitment. She had helped create the Cipher and the Cipher would help smooth over her reluctance to engage in certain aspects of her assigned missions.

Stacy became infinitely more effective when she had one of his carefully crafted templates for being someone other than herself. Far better able to overcome any misgivings about any particularly objectionable aspect of a mission. If it helped her overcome her objections to training scenarios, Graham and his research team had new hopes that their Cipher could influence and manipulate equally physically gifted recruits into becoming the ruthless agents he desired.

With this approach, she completed several practical observations successfully with theoretically reluctant targets. He had hoped he would not have needed to conduct that many but based on her previous failures he needed to be sure she wouldn't do anything to betray herself in a life or death situation. Absolutely sure. He wasn't taking any chances on her future safety.

Stacy embraced the approach of insulating herself within her alias for these observations and, in the last two observations and at her own suggestion, created the persona herself on the fly with the expectation that such improvisation may one day be required. Her own drive to succeed made her own cover identities almost as effective as the engineered ones.

She expressed some disgust with herself and the situation afterward but showed no weaknesses during the exercises themselves. She saved the true extent of her disgust with herself for private moments and made sure she wasn't discovered in an embarrassing state again. It was even more than Graham had hoped - such autonomous self-conditioning in an agent acting out of a dedication to duty would ensure he could leverage the hard-won training of agents who would not hesitate to do what was necessary in the field despite any misgivings.

.

* * *

.

Not for the first time in his career Agent Montgomery lamented his role in this farcical play but, as always, found some solace in the fact that this desensitization may one day save her life. He hadn't been able to bring himself to do the observations himself, instead relying on the two female agents assisting him.

When she had been located after the night they lost her, Chloe had come by to let him know Stacy was OK finding him on the phone with the front desk demanding a restock of his empty mini bar having already ordered a liquid snack from room service. He had started drinking when Stacy had not reported in at 11 pm, quarterbacking the search for her from his hotel room, and if Chloe had called - instead of informing him in person - he had no reason to think he would have ever stopped. Chloe stayed with him that night, reassuring him that they were doing the right thing, as he had once convinced her, until he fell asleep.

They were slightly more critical than he tended to be but both agreed that Stacy had passed successfully and utilized the training that all three of them had provided over the past few months effectively. She was ready.

"Chloe and Kimberly agreed that you did everything perfectly last night. Congratulations Ms. Mills, that was your final training exercise on this topic."

"Oh Roan, don't start mincing words now." she started to verbally spar with her mentor and friend but was stopped short by the hollow look he met her with and continued more quietly. "But...I'm glad to hear it. Hopefully, it will be a while before it comes up again."

Agents Chloe Daniels and Kimberly Jackson had been brought in by Agent Montgomery to tutor Stacy and a few of the other recruits on some of the more unsavory aspects of finding yourself alone with a man who thought you were something you were not. They were both more conventionally recruited than Stacy and had become excellent agents with varied experiences.

To the casual observer, Chloe was a shorter version of Jessica Rabbit, all legs and breasts and even a raspy though not quite Kathleen Turner-esque voice. The similarity was even more pronounced now that she wore her hair draped over the left side of her face to hide the still slightly visible scarring on her cheek and ear. She even wore gloves whenever it was remotely wardrobe appropriate - long silk ones with formal wear and fingerless leather ones with anything approaching casual which elicited a fair number of Lara Croft comments. Although the remnants of the burns were very faint, barely visible even if you knew what to look for, she was very self conscious about her hands.

Chloe was reinstated as a deep cover agent for a short while after barely surviving a mission gone horribly wrong and had later requested a move to a technical support role. She was generally regarded as a burnout but Agent Montgomery knew that she had simply had too much asked of her. Even then, the CIA surgeons and specialists could do amazing things if properly motivated. She had effectively fooled them all into believing she would and could be capable of returning to her old role, got what she wanted out of the bargain and then engineered her exit from field work eighteen months later.

She was one of the few people Roan knew who was clever and coldly calculating enough to get what she wanted from the CIA. Her short lived agreement to return to full duty status had more to do with ensuring the agency adequately treated her injuries and minimized the scarring than any desire to do so. She maintained the charade to this day, saying she simply lost her edge. But Roan was the only person she would wink at when she did so. And she liked that Roan didn't seem to care about her scars.

Kimberly was an intriguing combination of tall and athletic with all the most striking features of the women in her African-American father's family and her still gorgeous Cambodian mother. Her father had trained her as a competitive shooter until she was in college when he became one of the few casualties of enemy action in the first Gulf War even though the nature of his service excluded him from the official count. Her mother was a dancer and actress in her youth and only somewhat reluctantly accepted and encouraged her daughter's choice when she followed in her father's footsteps passing up a chance at the US Olympic team in her preferred events; the 25 metre pistol and 50 metre rifle three positions.

She had also identified the gaps in Stacy's knowledge of popular culture. It was common practice to provide deep cover operatives with 'cultural packets' consisting of recent and well known regional history and important happenings. As Roan had described it, they were not designed to provide in depth detail but rather just enough information so operatives weren't caught flat-footed in conversations with people who shared similar backgrounds as the operative's alleged history. They also covered world events of interest to a particular target. Roan had described it as knowing enough to get a person talking and keep them talking. "People think you are a stellar conversationalist if you let them do all the talking." he had said.

But there were also what the Agency called 'reacclimation packets' that covered domestic pop culture. The intent was to bring deep cover agents back up to speed when they emerged from long-term legends. It was as much for their benefit as to not draw attention to their odd voids in knowledge of domestic current events. Kim procured packets from the past ten years and Stacy included them in her studies - focusing more on the political and social elements rather than the references to sports and entertainment. After all, on what kind of assignment would an in-depth knowledge of movies or music be necessary?

Kimberly and Stacy had already met and she doubled as Stacy's strategic mission planning instructor. She had a skill set similar to but not as extensive as Stacy's, a stellar record in every conceivable role an agent could be asked to perform and an uncanny knack for knowing when to cut her losses successfully making many unconventional tactical decisions over the years.

Twice she had spared her team and herself from sure disaster when her suspicions of blown covers and an impending double-cross had been confirmed after her abort signal had been initially regarded as premature. Both incidents caused such operational disruptions that they resulted in official reprimands. Both reprimands were later withdrawn when facts supported her decisions. It was this ability to read a situation that Roan valued most of all.

It was Chloe's mental toughness and ability to manipulate her surroundings while under extreme psychological duress and Kimberly's ability to read subtle cues that Roan sought out, not their undeniable physical attributes and skills. Roan Montgomery trusted the judgment of both of these women and they trusted him to treat their assessments fairly and appropriately. He had trained them both and felt as much responsibility for their well-being as he did for Stacy and their other new recruits.

Stacy had initially found much of their instruction to be awkward and embarrassing. At one point Kimberly had jokingly suggested that she should just kiss the hell out of her and get her over it. A few days later in a Manhattan night club where no one would bat an eyelash after a half dozen shooters each, Chloe had done it. When, after a few seconds longer than she had realized, Stacy had sputteringly attempted to tell Chloe she wasn't interested - although had a man she found attractive kissed her like _that_ there was a good chance they would have been headed out the door - Chloe had just laughed at her. When they found a quiet moment later that night, she explained.

"Stacy, kissing is dangerous. It tends to reveal your true intentions. You can fake a lot of things but a lack of enthusiasm is just another lapse in character. It can be incredibly difficult to recover from. That meant nothing to me but it is very difficult to convincingly kiss someone without it being an intimate act. In some ways its more intimate than sex sometimes is. It needs to mean nothing to you. You either have to be the type of person that enjoys it despite the circumstances - which we both know you aren't - or you must to be able to kiss someone you are not in the least truly interested in and absolutely convince them that you are _intensely_ interested in them. I like you girl, but I hadn't been secretly waiting for a chance to kiss you."

"Coulda fooled me."

"Well, thank you. That's exactly the point."

She had found their extremely graphic discussions a little less embarrassing thereafter and tried her best to achieve that same degree of detachment. Over time, all three had developed some degree of affection for Stacy and, when it was asked, Chloe trusted that the question Stacy had later posed to her in confidence would be addressed within their circle of trust. She had shared it with Roan last night as Stacy seduced and drugged a tech company CFO and trusted him to field it better than she currently felt she could. Unless, of course, it raised any red flags about potential risks to Stacy or agents she may work with in the future.

.

* * *

.

"Chloe mentioned that you have some personal concerns?"

Stacy's expression faltered for a moment in embarrassment "God, I hoped she would keep that to herself. It doesn't have anything to do with the job."

"Understood. But, as I mentioned, you've already passed this training so you don't have to worry about your concerns impacting your assessment. She only told me out of concern for you. What's on your mind?"

"Well, we...Chloe, Kimberly and I were just talking about men in general and I asked them whether - doing what we do - or rather, doing what we may have to do..." Stacy paused, put her elbows on the table, leaned forward and grasped then smoothed her hair as she placed her head in her hands. She looked back up - hands still gripping her hair near the base of her skull - and sighed before continuing "...just, is it even possible to ever have a real relationship with someone?"

"And what did they say?"

Stacy relaxed her posture somewhat but continued to lean in as she quietly answered. "Chloe said she doesn't trust men in general anymore. Doesn't think she'll trust any man ever again." Roan flinched at that slightly but didn't interrupt. "Kim said she wouldn't even entertain the idea of having a real relationship unless she was out of the agency entirely. Even then she wouldn't even consider telling a man about all the things she had done. That any man who would accept it wasn't the type of man she wanted to be with and any man she wanted to be with wasn't the type of man who would accept it."

"Hmph..." he grunted quietly before muttering "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

"How's that?"

"Groucho Marx? No? You kids today..." he smiled and theatrically shook his head in mock disbelief, and Stacy was pleased to see that he was back to enjoying their ongoing banter about their age differences before elaborating "...just a clever comment from a clever man meant in jest. But it also translates to this idea that some people see themselves as so defective in some way that they think anyone who is interested in them must be equally defective to even feel that way. Their own insecurities manifested in suspicion of anyone foolish enough to see past their flaws. Anyone foolish enough to care for them."

At this he leaned forward a bit and found her hand across the table. Small, comforting gestures between the two of them had become commonplace and accepted. Sometimes it surprised Stacy that she really did trust this man who had been tasked with teaching her how to deal with some of the ugliest realities of their profession.

"Many - shockingly many - men are shallow, jealous, Neanderthals on some level who don't even reveal their failings until they are forced to confront even the slightest disturbance to what they think is 'the way thinks should be'. Both Chloe and Kimberly are right in their suspicion that it would take a very special person to accept some of the things you may be asked to do. But please remember that if you meet someone who cannot accept it, that is a reflection on them, not on you. Never forget that you are an incredible woman in many, many ways beyond your outer beauty. And even _that_ you still haven't fully accepted. Anyone who doesn't see that is a fool. Kimberly - and Groucho - have it backwards: any man who _wouldn't_ want to be with you because of anything you have bravely done in defense of others is a man who doesn't deserve you."

She looked down and smiled as he told her this and began blushing furiously at his compliments. As he released her hand she cheekily asked "Is that your professional opinion? Or the opinion of a proud Papa?"

Her snarky wit was one of the things Roan loved about her. As was her ability to see things from multiple perspectives. The only thing he wished was different was that she trusted her perceptions of everything and everyone around her - but didn't think nearly high enough of herself. He briefly wondered where she would have ended up if someone had seen and acted on her vast potential before the Deputy Director of the CIA had done so. He realized that he _did_ say all those things because of his affection for her - very much like a reassuring parent he supposed - but he also objectively knew that they were all true.

So he chose to answer her half-joking question as seriously as possible, trying harder than he should have to not to get choked up, when he calmly looked her in the eye and said simply "Both".

He could tell that she absorbed all of the intent behind that single word as she looked away and tried to minimize the affect that recent events might have on future events "Well, it's not as though I've really done a ridiculous amount of really horrible things - even counting my time at school - no worse than any other girl who went through a wild phase in college - so maybe it won't be so bad..."

"Stacy." he interrupted "You can't let yourself think of it that way. Like its a box you can keep filling and one day close the lid and lock it all away as long as it doesn't overflow. It never stops. Doing things you'd rather not do. You'll understand why certain things are necessary...maybe even convince yourself that you are indifferent about it because you understand the logic behind it but at the end of the day - when you're alone with your thoughts - it's you who has done them. A little or a lot, it never stops."

"I know." she sighed and then saw his disbelieving look "I do, I know. But...when does it get to be too much?"

"I'm afraid you won't know until you know." His own box had overflowed long ago.

Stacy still wanted to know how her life - _if_ her life - her real life - could fit into this world. She thought back to Keith and their dance lessons. She now understood much of his reluctance to answer her questions in any kind of detail but she still considered him her first mentor. A man who admitted having someone in his life that he wanted more with. Had they tried to find time together? Was she a civilian or another spy? Did she know about his secret life or not? It was a train of thought that pulled a very personal question along behind it. She didn't know if it would ever come up in her own future but she wanted to know if it was possible.

So she asked.

"Roan? Have you ever been in love?"

She could tell the question caught him off guard as he hesitated to answer. Finally he offered "It's hard to say, honestly. Seeing someone for a few days at a time in between missions that last a few days to several months... sometimes back-to-back missions... often times both of you knowing you'll have to cheat on them to at least some extent...more so if you're fool enough to convince yourself that any degree is acceptable... It doesn't really nurture a relationship."

"What if it's another agent? Does that make it any easier?"

He wasn't sure if it was Chloe's revelations about trust or those of another woman he tried not to think about too often that drove his next comments. "I would advise against it. Another agent will have all the same concerns that you have. This life is all-consuming. It has to be in order to be successful at it. You have dedicated yourself to something at the exclusion of all else."

"But surely another agent would understand that. Wouldn't hold it against you, right?"

"Possibly. But you asked about love not each person turning a blind eye to what the other has done. Love is acceptance. And many cannot accept _themselves_ much less a partner just as flawed as them. One agent might be willing to try to leave this life but two being on the same page at the same time? I've never seen it happen. That level of commitment..." and sense of being farther and farther from normal - deeper and deeper into the darkness - deceiving yourself more and more - he thought but did not say "...makes it hard to walk away. Hard to ever pretend to be a real person again."

Stacy realized immediately that she hadn't said anything about leaving the spy life and took a blind shot as to who would and would not do what. "And she wouldn't walk away?"

Roan smiled sadly at his protégé's uncanny powers of observation before answering quietly "Well, first it was me who was too full of himself. Then, when I was ready - or thought I was - no. She wouldn't. Not for me."

They sat in silence for a few moments before Roan offered almost as though talking to himself "I'm extremely proud of her just so you know. She's a very driven woman. Incredibly smart. Much like you." They shared a smile at that. "She's military intelligence - not like us - so maybe some of the realities of our world factored into it as she rose through the ranks and opened her eyes wider. Learned more about me. Maybe too much."

He remembered the day she had recommended him for training her own agents in Infiltration and Inducement. He could tell by her emphasis when she said they should all benefit from what he was 'best at' that she had learned some of his secrets - seen at least some portion of his file. Something she had said she would never do but apparently had and had not been able to unsee.

"Anyway..." he said exaggeratedly as he pushed his chair back, clapped his hands to his knees and stood "...There's nothing edible here, especially the corn dogs." and he nodded toward the brightly colored establishment offering the offending food product. He offered his arm and an alternate dining option with a smile "I could take you to American Girl Cafe...maybe get you a miniature Stacy doll..."

"Because that's not creepy at all..." she returned his smile as she took his arm. They both walked away from the food court ignoring the accusing glares and accompanying implications of those paying more attention to the beautiful young woman in the slightly rumpled suit and the distinguished man more than twice her age than they had any right to. Roan anticipated Stacy's question of whether they were all thinking he was her father or lover and headed it off with small talk.

Somewhere along the way the implication that he could think of her that way had become more than unsavory to him. He would say it was a paternal feeling he had for all the men and women he trained if he didn't consider himself completely unfit for such a role. No true parent would send this young woman into the dangerous world he knew was awaiting her and pretend he had a right to consider her a daughter.

Conversation turned to whether she had any information on her next assignment. Before her trip to Minnesota, Gunny had invited her topside for one last hike and a toast to her good fortune with what he called the 'good stuff'. He had put a good word in for her with Special Operations Group. She had no idea how rare both actions were for him.

Most male agents did a turn in SOG's Special Activities Division to get some combat experience. As much as the idea frightened her, Stacy was intrigued and a little indignant about the fact that women were not assigned to such rotations. She told him she would consider it and Roan had offered his own advice. That it was usually combined with the missions she had trained for and offered little down time.

When she and Gunny had returned from their last walk, the Town Car that had brought her was waiting. Harrison had returned with a large envelope full of documents and credit cards and a bag packed with all the clothing and necessities that a woman named Margo Wilcox would need on her upcoming assessment abroad and - with another sealed envelope of documents - that a woman named Sarah Walker would need upon her return. Gunny offered to fetch her bag that she hadn't even remembered bringing.

She told him it wouldn't be necessary. There wasn't anything she brought with her that she would be needing. She was as done with The Facility as it was with her.

She refrained from hugging him as she left and simply said goodbye. Finding her unadorned military cap on the back seat was a welcome surprise. As was looking inside of it to find the crudely drawn single chevron of a private first class. His way of saying she was no longer a recruit and worthy of his respect.

As she and Roan walked and talked in generalities, she grew visibly as excited - in her own guarded way - as any of the little girls in the American Girl store he had passed this morning when he asked her about her next destination.

"They're sending me to Paris!" she said as gleefully as he had ever seen her. She was _finally_ going to see more of the larger world than what she had seen on brief training missions. "For four days. We're supposed to scout a few locations and apparently there's a final evaluation of some kind but we aren't supposed to get the mission details until the day of. Still, after all this it's just good to be so near the end."

Agent Montgomery felt a sudden protective rush of anger against the ruthless agent he had once known who was now the Deputy Director of the CIA for choosing that location to complete her indoctrination into their mad world. The so-called City of Love. Given the topics of their earlier conversation he almost laughed at the irony. More famously known as the City of Light. He doubts she will ever consider it as either. Every agent save the borderline unhinged remembers the where and the when of this last assessment vividly.

And somewhere in Paris will be the location burned into her mind.

He wanted to tell her. And it wasn't even protocol that prevented him from doing so. She had already been through so much these past four months he just couldn't bring himself to pile on more bad news. He also weighed whether it would be better if she had time to prepare herself mentally or if she would just beat herself up for those few remaining days of what little is left of her innocence.

He wondered if all his work had been in vain and Paris might be the thing that finally breaks her or gets her killed. This is why he quit before. The damage he had done to this beautiful young woman, and apparently to the two women who came before her that he had recruited to help perpetuate the cycle, was pressing down on him.

And there were dozens of others. The men were as arrogant as he had been but they were generally in far less danger than their female counterparts. They would likely live and learn from a badly played hand. His female recruits were the ones who kept him up at night. His collection of American girls - more than half torn, tattered and burned and the rest hollowed out inside. He felt the sudden need for a Martini or three despite the early hour.

She had been right, it _was_ what he was best at. Such a pompous ass early in his career, destroying lives for his own amusement and pleasure never considering the emotional carnage and even violent retribution left in his wake. And it had ultimately been the undoing of any happiness he could have hoped for himself. He had started training agents as though he could somehow prove that his own behavior had been justified. Extensions of him and his arrogance. Until he learned of a few he had lost.

All of his girls - there was nothing he could do about the situation they found themselves in. Nothing he could do to stop the machine. All he could hope for was that he could teach them _something_ that would be the difference between them learning to live with what they had done or losing that option forever.

He would do it as long as he could stand it. As long as amazing women like the ones he had met over the past few months were asked to entertain such dangerous tactics he would teach them all he could. It was what he was best at. His gift had become his penance.

"Well, Miss Almost-Agent..." he said low enough that only she could hear as the masterful actor in him took over "...let's see if we can find something edible, shall we."

He guided her toward the exit so they could leave for a more elegant location for their last supper - and to delay their meal until a slightly more respectable hour for his beverages of choice.

.

* * *

.

030: Sweet Suffering

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Kitchen

Sun Oct 7, 2007 7:08 pm

.

"But you want me to butt out. I get it. It's none of my business." Ellie Bartowski just wanted her brother to finally find the happiness he deserved. He had finally shown signs of doing something more than meandering through life still dragging the ghosts of Stanford and Jill Roberts behind him. She just wished he would talk to her like he used to.

"No! No, no, no, no, I'm not saying that! I'm not saying that. I...I-"

But what was he saying? This was his sister. The woman he had confided nearly everything in when he was growing up. The one who had sacrificed so much to keep him with her as she entered into college rather than moving on with her life with plans to meet again one day when things settled down. Who had been so incredibly proud of him when he had received that scholarship based on a high school teacher's recommendation. He could still remember her canceling her date for the evening to celebrate with him after hiding herself away in her bedroom for a few minutes. She had returned having clearly been crying with slightly red eyes but a beaming smile on her a fresh face and wearing much more comfortable, less revealing clothes.

She had sacrificed so much of a normal teenage life for him - to keep him in a good school district and off the radar of anyone who thought they knew better about raising him to be a good man. And then she did it all again for him after the disaster at Stanford. Kept him afloat and really only gently prodded him to consider waking up from his doldrums to reclaim his life. Now that the entire US intelligence community had seemingly converged upon him, he thought maybe he was ready for something bigger. Something important. And now he had to hide in plain sight, in the same comfortable but unchallenging job while, for the first time in his life, he hid the most important things happening to him from the most important woman in his life and hoped he was the good man she had tried to raise.

He had already put her off once, describing the situation as complicated. The situation between himself and the stunning CIA agent protecting him that Ellie believed to be... dating him? No, that was absurd despite being the preferred CIA / NSA cover story. But they had been spending quite a lot of time together. Not all of it mired in intelligence reviews and bomb defusals and ritzy art auctions with a particularly beautiful but deadly arms smuggler in attendance.

So maybe complicated was pretty accurate. But some of the other words he had used to describe Sarah Walker had likely clouded the issue. Agile was true. Sarah made cats and gymnasts seem awkward and clumsy. Exhausting? That was more a byproduct of the situation. He actually felt quite relaxed with her sometimes.

It was just that Ellie seemed so hurt that he didn't - _couldn't_ \- confide in her. He really wanted to find a way to let her back in and settled on a secret fear grounded in a secret hope.

"I just don't want to create a false sense of excitement for a relationship that seems doomed."

"Why is it doomed?" he almost smiled at his sister's well practiced method of getting to the root of the issue. Oh, how he wished he could ask her real advice but settled for a vague expression of his secret fears. Five years wasted at a Burbank Buy-More when he could have found _some_ way to complete his degree. Or, if Stanford blocked that, revive some of the same innovative projects that had resulted in the scholarship they had given him in the first place. Find a tech firm - all he had to do was throw a rock - and start knocking on doors until someone - _anyone_ \- gave him a chance.

But he hadn't done any of that. And he knew it wasn't that easy but he hadn't even really tried. Why would someone as amazing and driven and capable and smart as Sarah think he _wasn't_ a waste of her time? So the answer - to why his interest in the gorgeous super spy was doomed - was an easy one to articulate.

"Because she's not into me."

"Uh, trust me. I have seen the way that that girl looks at you and she is into you." It was so dismissive of what his sister obviously believed to be his poor read on the situation. Like there was something so incredibly casually obvious that he was missing. Ellie often had much better insight into such things which is why it was so hard not to include her in these recent changes to his life. But thoughts of what this might mean caused an ember of hope to glow inside his chest.

"Really?" He had always trusted Ellie's opinion on these things. Even on his birthday it was likely that, had he given any of the women Ellie had invited a real chance, one of them would have looked past his apparent failings. Maybe that one who knew Bryce actually was a little interested if the name of his former friend hadn't sent him down an unrecoverable death spiral. Maybe Ellie knew more than he did; she _was_ the brain surgeon - or well on her way to being the brain surgeon - of the family. Maybe it was time for him to wake up and listen?

"It's none of my business." How could she think that he wouldn't want her advice? And it hurt him to think that his dismissiveness hurt her even as dangerous as her questions might be.

"Okay, no. Okay, fine. What the hell. What do you, what do you want to ask me about Sarah?"

"Really?" God, her excitement was as frightening as how suddenly she could go from angry to happy. He only hoped that he could find a way to answer whatever she asked. He and Sarah had worked out a few vague answers to appease such questions without providing much, if any, verifiable details. It came easily to Sarah, just like every other technique on which she had been trained. Sometimes he was so tempted to abandon all restraint when the hummingbird flitted into his vision and let the Intersect reveal some of the truth of her to him but he respected both her and Casey too much to ever do something like that deliberately.

"You better hurry up. This offer will not last."

"Okay. Do you like her?" Chuck's sister asked him pointedly and deliberately, enunciating each word separately. And the answer he had been refusing to acknowledge, even to himself, became crystal clear.

"Yeah." and she instantly squealed with delight as only Ellie could do. "Da-da-da- no, no, unnecessary excitements."

"Sorry. Sorry."

"What else?"

"That's it."

"That's it?"

"Yeah. Chuck, that's it. I don't need to know the intimate details, okay? As long as you're happy, that's enough for me. And I don't... I don't want to nag you about your future and your job. I don't want to be the sister that just pesters you into oblivion."

"No, no, no, no, you're...you're not a pest."

"I just know what an incredible guy Charles Bartowski is and and sometimes I'm not so sure that he knows it."

Always his biggest fan. Ellie truly was the most amazing person and he should have known she wouldn't have wanted to dig around in his insecurities. She just wanted him to be happy. He wished he _could_ tell her everything but maybe he wouldn't have to and could still benefit from her insight. And if there were ever anything real to share about his own happiness he could give her that well-earned return on all her worry and concern over the years without putting everyone in danger.

"How do you feel about a brother-sister hug situation right now?"

"I'm open to it."

She had always been his lifeline and she was no fool so, logic dictated, that if she saw something between him and Sarah it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Courtyard

Sun Oct 7, 2007 7:22 pm

.

"So...going to be hanging around for a while?"

Sarah and Morgan had walked awkwardly into the courtyard nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. And she had her arms full so she let him ring the doorbell. Only he didn't. His hand just hovered over it as he asked his unexpected question.

"Umm...looks like it? Why?"

"Well, Chuck's kinda on pins and needles around you. Which may not be an uncommon thing _you've_ seen from other guys but... Maybe you should make it clear if you're only gonna be here for a little while..."

She wasn't sure how to answer that - who knew what the future would bring for a spy like her? But he had already pressed the doorbell. She heard it chime and Chuck call out "I'll get it!"

She put her best unaffected face on but wasn't sure what Morgan was getting at as he spoke first in greeting to Chuck. "I thought we had plans tonight, you know? What is she doing here?"

"What, uh, what gave you that impression?" Chuck seemed delighted to see her which made Morgan's strangeness clear to her. Morgan was trying to protect him. He was extremely distrustful of her and extremely wary of any damage she might do. She would have to find a way to assure him or he was going to be constantly interjecting. Not only damaging their cover but stealing times like this evening away from her.

Morgan made some rambling non-sensical response that managed to get him in the door for dinner - which may have been his sole purpose all along given the quality of Ellie's cooking - as Chuck offered an apologetic "what're you gonna do" look on behalf of his best friend.

And, before she knew it, he was leaning in for a kiss but regrettably kept it small and chaste. At least PDA wasn't entirely off the table and maybe he would have been more bold if he hadn't steered away from her injured lip at the last instant.

"You okay?" he asked with a gesture to his own face, mirroring her minor injury.

"Uh, occupational hazard. She got in a lucky kick." Sarah offered a cocky grin and received one of complete adoration in return. He thinks she is immortal - or infalable - when she is anything but either.

If she hadn't wasted her advantage disarming the Argentinian woman, she wouldn't have started the fight at such a disadvantage. Sarah hadn't expected the other woman to be quite so proficient but she supposed one doesn't rise to leader of a small but notorious criminal enterprise without some degree of skill. She was small and slippery, the opposite of what she had been trained to be most effective against, and it took a few exchanges to feel out her style and regain the upper hand. She was sure the woman had thought Sarah was truly overmatched but saw the flicker in her eyes when she realized, despite the appearance of scoring a few damaging blows or the seeming advantage of being armed with a knife against Sarah's handcuffs doubling as brass knuckles, she had been toyed with. But that first shot to the lip had almost made Sarah lose her cool.

"Do you have some kinda aversion to doctors?"

"It's not that bad, Chuck." She resisted the urge to pull back as he lightly held her chin and urged her gently to raise it to the light for a better look. She didn't like this kind of care and attention - it made her feel vulnerable and she hated that. But his expression held no trace of any kind of judgment or disappointment - only genuine concern. And he then made it clear that he didn't see her as weak, he was just concerned that she might be hurt.

"Sorry, that's not what I was getting at. I'm not questioning you...I mean I _am_ concerned about your lip but more concerned that you don't know what you're walking into." And at her puzzled look he continued. "It looks like it hurt but if you say its not bad then I'll take your word for it."

"Buuuuuuuut?"

"Buuuuuuuut..." he mimicked "...you're about to have a medical professional tell you whether she agrees with you or not. And just a little warning - she won't."

Right on cue Ellie made her way from the kitchen. "Chuck, let the poor girl in. Hi, Sarah! Hi, oh my god. What happened?"

She furrowed her brow at Chuck's "told you so" expression before turning to greet Ellie. "Oh, it's nothing. Occupational hazard. Scooter was yelling something from the dining room and I looked back as I opened the freezer door. It's really heavy and I wasn't paying attention. It must look awful."

"Oh, no, sweetie. Just, let's get you patched up. It'll just take a second.

Sarah raised her eyebrows at Chuck as he gave her a knowing shrug and Ellie dragged her by the hand into the bathroom.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Bathroom

Sun Oct 7, 2007 7:25 pm

.

"...Just let me grab my implements of destruction..." Ellie said as she retrieved a few supplies from the linen closet and, as she located the missing topical ointment from the medicine cabinet, said over her shoulder "...were your ears burning too?"

"Wha-?" Sarah started to ask as Ellie continued.

"I mean Chuck and I were just talking about you and...turn to the light and look up for me..." Ellie pressed an alcohol swab to Sarah's cut lip and the cold sting was a sensation she recognized as something she should wince at. So she did and Ellie seemed none the wiser.

"What was he saying? Something about my tendency to bump into stuff?"

"...that doesn't look too bad...I, um, I shouldn't say anything at all but Chuck...he really likes you. Not that it's because of how you look. Or not just that. He's just really worried about letting himself like you too much. I'll leave it at that."

The sensation was the opposite of the cold sting of the alcohol swab and she was powerless to stop the flushed feeling at Ellie's revealing comments, even as she continued.

"I like you too. I'm glad Chuck introduced us - he's never brought a girl home to meet me before. Even in college."

Wait. That would have been useful information in formulating their cover. Although Ellie had asked him to invite her over the first time. He hadn't mentioned there being anything odd or unusual about it. And tonight had been entirely his idea. He was either taking advantage of the cover - and considering her frustration at him committing to the physical affection part of the show, that seemed unlikely - or just wanted to see her. It was an even more intimate abuse of the cover and she wasn't sure she objected all that much. It was tactically solid. More solid than his previous aversions to introducing girlfriends and she couldn't help buy wonder how much of it was strategic and how much was real even as she smooth played their cover relationship.

"I don't know, Ellie. I've had some bad experiences and I just don't want to hurt him because I'm so messed up. I didn't plan on jumping into something so close to my last...relationship."

"That's all I ask Sarah. Not to promise that you _won't_ hurt him...just the fact that you're afraid that you will hurt him is enough for me. But this isn't just some rebound thing, is it? I mean, you do like him right?"

"He makes me feel..." and she struggled for a moment to complete the sentence. So many things came to mind. Beautiful was first. Truly beautiful. The way he looked at her in complete wonderment was overwhelming sometimes. And it wasn't just creepy staring, it was during her awkward moments. When she said something everyone else she had ever known would roll their eyes at he smiled and seemed to know every bit of the thought behind what she said. He just got her. The her that she kept hidden away. It scared the hell out of her and made her feel more human than she had in a long, long time.

Only then did she realize that she had taken far too long to complete the sentence. That Ellie was sure to have caught on that she was completely mental. Incapable of reflecting that light back to Chuck so intensely.

And then she realized...she _had_ completed her thought.

_He makes me feel._

And that Ellie was smiling uncontrollably at whatever was involuntarily showing on her face.

"Okay. I think we're all set here. It wont need stitches if you keep this on it. And you're just as pretty as ever even with a split lip. Let's go see what the boys have gotten into. You should file a report against that place if that door is unsafe..."

As they walked back out to the living room, Sarah puzzled over what it all meant. Chuck wanting to be with her bit not taking obvious advantage. Ellie suddenly so protective of her in addition to her own brother.

"What are you two doing to my television?"

"C'mon, El. Halo is way better on the big screen. Besides you wouldn't want us to leave you out here all alone, would you?" Morgan's presumptuousness knew no bounds but Chuck had a knowing grin as Sarah met his eyes and he actually winked at her behind Morgan's back.

_He really likes me._

"Well, you could just leave Sarah in here with me. I could tell her all kinds of stories about young Charles Bar-"

Chuck darted behind his sister and snaked a hand over her mouth as his elbow and other arm trapped her arms. "Pay no attention to my somewhat delusional sister. She makes up such fanciful stories about me."

Sarah couldn't help but smile as Chuck's sister winked conspiratorially around her brother's hand and Chuck jumped back in feigned disgust.

"Eww...El? Did you lick my hand?"

Sarah felt something else now. Maybe what Chuck had intended. She felt included.

And she felt herself laugh at the continued banter between the two siblings who now seemed ten years younger than their actual selves.

_He really likes me... And so does she._

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence

Sun Oct 7, 2007 10:45 pm

.

Chuck and Morgan had played video games briefly until Chuck had set Morgan up on some sort of network game against other players and joined her and Ellie over their wine. He artfully blocked Ellie's half-hearted attempts to tell embarrassing childhood stories - which often contained the interesting and embarrassing nugget in the "and then there was the time" preambles which Chuck was unable to prevent - while coaching Morgan from the dining table. Ellie had more stories than she could count and the wine and company had been excellent.

Her face hurt from smiling so much as Chuck took her aside to say goodnight. Morgan was grazing in the kitchen as Ellie packed up leftovers and Sarah got the distinct impression that Chuck's sister was running interference and, as she stood to leave, she gave voice to one of her regrets from the evening.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to dance. Especially after you took the time to learn."

"Probably for the best." Chuck deflected modestly. "I could use a little work."

"Really? Because you caused quite a buzz with your performance."

"Yeah...trust me, it wasn't anything to write home about." It would probably be a good idea to clue Sarah in, just in case Ellie or Awesome ever mentioned his botched tango instruction since he had told them he had danced the dance, but for now he was enjoying the idea that Sarah thought there had been something impressive about his bumbling through the evening. Maybe he would learn and surprise her someday.

"Your dance partner seemed quite taken with you...stalking you at work and everything..."

"Wha-...La Ciudad?" He was so easy. And at least he didn't call her Malena...

"What sort of alias is that anyway? 'The City'?"

"Actually, it's because she was from a wealthy family _in_ the city but started hanging out with one of the gangs from one of the shadier..." he paused at her quirked eyebrow "...never mind. Not important."

"Hmm. She was pretty."

"Oh. Yeah...I guess so. As psychopathic killers go." And again she reacted unexpectedly, this time with a blank, far off look. "What?"

"Nothing." she lied. Was she really all that different? One a brunette Argentinian arms smuggler. Her, a blonde CIA agent. Both beautiful and deadly. Just because she was backed by a government rather than the shadowy head of a criminal enterprise?

"I'm just glad it all worked out..." she replied flatly, before regaining her footing and offering a flirtatious smile. "...except my dance."

"Someday, Ms. Walker. Right?"

"Sure." And her wistful tone was even more unexpected than her previous reactions. He knew she was saying more than she was saying with words but could not keep track of all the emotions he saw swirling beneath her calm outer demeanor as she even more wistfully half-whispered, as though telling a secret "Someday."

The way their eyes were locked was dangerous and Chuck raised his voice slightly as he looked away. "Morgan? Can you tidy up the consoles?" and almost as part of the same thought but in a lower voice that almost gave her a chill "I'll walk you to your car..."

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Courtyard

Sunday, Oct 7, 2007 10:50 pm

.

Sarah stepped out into the courtyard with Chuck and tried to turn the conversation back to the cold comfort of professionalism. She was so very proud of him but didn't want to gush over him. After all, this was his first experience with any field operation and, while he had handled himself as well as could be expected given that his involvement was far greater than they had anticipated, she didn't want him to become so confident as to become careless and end up getting himself hurt.

Finally free to speak she said what she had been waiting all night to say. "Congratulations on your first mission. You did really good, Chuck."

"Stop it. I'm not really a spy." came the expectedly modest reply. "Your computer ended up in the head of a guy who only knows how to fix them."

She needn't have worried; it wasn't false modesty. He can't see it.

He can't see it at all.

Sarah tried to spell it out for him as much as she dared. "You survived a near death experience under the threat of torture and apprehended one of the world's most elusive killers. I'm not sure what you think spies do exactly, but most of us would consider that a pretty good day."

"Okay, sure, so today I helped take down a major international arms dealer. But tomorrow...tomorrow, I still gotta go clock in at Buy More." He suddenly found that he wanted to be more than his existence in what had become his refuge from the world. As much for the woman inside the apartment - and maybe, in another world, someone as amazing as the woman in front of him - as for himself. "I mean, what's the good in being a hero if nobody knows about it?"

Wasn't that usually the case? How many people that she had sacrificed so much to save even knew she existed? Sarah stopped him and he turned to face her with his back to his shared apartment. She reached up to touch his cheek, to make sure she had his full attention and got lost for a moment in his soulful eyes. He was so much more than he realized and his eyes held none of the arrogance or hardness she had grown so accustomed to seeing looking back at her from other men she had encountered.

"_You_ know..." she emphasized. If nothing else he needed to understand that he was more than he had convinced himself he was over these past five directionless years. And although it may have been ill-advised to encourage his particular brand of selfless courage she wanted him to know that she understood it too. So she added softly "...and so do I."

Chuck smiled at that as she slowly withdrew her hand hoping he didn't consciously realize her small concession of letting her ring finger drag lightly along the light stubble on his jaw as she did so. She could see in his smile that he finally understood that she was proud of him. That seemed to be enough. Enough for both of them as Ellie's observations, his own realizations, and Sarah's praise combined to embolden him.

"You know, if we were really dating this would be the part where I'd be forced to kiss you goodnight."

Sarah smiled as he caught her off guard. She hadn't expected to consider this part of a cover relationship to be a benefit but found that her pulse was quickening and she felt slightly flushed. It may not be entirely real but there's some room to work with and she found that this light teasing between them was just dangerous enough to keep them both delightfully off balance. So she played along. "Forced? Would it be so bad?"

Chuck smiled back. "I'm sure I could suffer through it."

"Me too." she quietly replied as he saw her glance quickly over his shoulder toward the apartment window.

"My sister is watching us, isn't she?"

"Mmm-hmm." she hummed without taking her eyes off his.

Chuck muttered under his breath "Worst. Spy. Ever." to which Sarah gave him a cheeky look, dipping her chin, grinning widely and looking up pointedly at him with her eyebrows raised.

It was the same look that had intoxicated him that first morning on the beach. He just smiled in response to her implication before saying "So...we _are_ going to be forced to do this?" in a faux exasperated tone. But his smile belied his words as he took a step closer to her and surprised both Sarah and himself by boldly but gently moving his hands to her hips.

She looked up into his warm hazel eyes - they were a rich, dark brown in the dim light of the courtyard - and smiled back. "Seems so...Now, you _do_ know this is just for the cover? Don't get handsy, Bartowski."

"Ms. Walker, I am ever the gentleman." he softly breathed as he slowly pulled her slightly closer and lowered his head, tilting slightly to the right while still looking her directly in the eye.

"I'm sure you are..." and she smiled mischievously. She half-closed her eyes and whispered "...but I make no such claims."

He felt her right hand slowly snake it's way inside his left arm, briefly flattening against his chest to feel the warmth of him and his rapidly accelerating heartbeat before continuing up and behind his neck. Her fingers laced through his hair before fisting hard as she closed her eyes, rose slightly on her tiptoes and pulled his lips down to hers but stopping just short where her open mouth slowly and softly touched and closed around his upper lip in contrast to the firm grip holding him in place.

She managed not to wince at the pain in her split lip from the earlier fight as she pressed her lips and the tiniest bit of her tongue harder against his lips the second time. He loosened his grip to allow her other hand up to his neck where she had moved both hands to the sides of his face with the tips of her middle fingers resting delicately on the pulse points just under his jaw.

Their previous kisses had been mere pecks but Chuck could hear the certainty of his sister's advice and, knowing he was playing with fire, the alternative hypothesis became the null and he decided to test what he suddenly dared to believe might be true.

She had been the initiator for the first two kisses but now that both his arms were free Chuck tightened his grip around Sarah's waist keeping his hands as low on her back as he could without moving too low - lightly caressing the lowest curve of her spine was far more erotic to both of them than brutishly moving further down.

He hugged her closer -his huge hands spanning nearly her entire waist slid up her sides leaving trails of cool fire as he embraced her tightly - pulling her up onto her toes and straightening a bit pressing their hips together. He was acutely aware of every point of contact between their bodies but focused on softly kissing her injured lower lip.

She had never been kissed so gently.

Sarah's involuntary reaction was to gasp at his sudden confidence and to open her mouth slightly. Not to be outdone, she lightly traced his upper lip with her tongue with her lower lip still trapped between his. She wasn't pushing to deepen the kiss just tasting his lip and enjoying the fact that her gentle teasing had the obvious and intended effect on Chuck's anatomy.

She smiled at that sensation, pressing firmly against him, as she rocked back down to her heels. Chuck let out a small whimper and reluctantly loosened his grip to allow her retreat and she made one last strike - kissing his lower lip hard and sucking gently and erotically with just enough force that she lightly tugged on it as she pulled away.

Chuck stood for a few seconds with his mouth agape as he overcame his shock at the intimate contact and smiled as he heard his sister squeal with delight, then the squeal fade as she abandoned her post at the window. "You're apparently very convincing."

Sarah had been wanting to do that since the first night on the beach. It was everything she had hoped for and more. But the unfamiliar and unsettling feelings it had brought on - her racing pulse, the inability to catch her breath, the flush of warmth and the fluttering in her chest - suddenly made her feel a need to gain some distance. To diffuse the situation. To run away. So she dismissed all those feelings and tried to make light of it with the type of sarcastic remark she only felt comfortable making with him "Well, I have training."

She smiled back but it faded as Chuck's smile fell and he uttered "Right."

Sarah cautiously moved her left hand back to the side of his face with his chin still lowered. She immediately wanted to tell him not to go there and that she didn't mean it that way and any number of reassuring comments. But to do so would imply that there was a connection between them that she was not willing to give voice to. That it wasn't an act. Or at least wasn't _just_ an act. Instead the best she could offer was "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"No, no. I started it. Don't be sorry. That was amazing. Cover kiss or not."

She dropped her hand, grazing it down his arm on its way to grasp his and pressed her lips together into an unreadable line not knowing what to say. She had lost herself in the moment. It _was_ amazing and she ruined it with a careless comment.

She reluctantly let go of his hand as they wordlessly said goodnight. He watched her eyes intently for any sign that their kiss had been what he had hoped or at least more than he feared - that he hadn't just experienced what always happens when you play with fire - but her mask was well practiced. Finally, knowing this was just a part of his life now and that she was just making the best of a bad situation, he offered a small smile as she turned to walk away. Once seated in her car Sarah let out a long breath and threw her head back against the headrest.

She couldn't do this to herself. Or to him. Especially to him. It wasn't fair. If they were going to continue to involve Chuck in field operations, even in a limited capacity, she owed it to him to be at the top of her game not mooning over him like a giddy schoolgirl.

And Morgan - of all people - was right. She might not be here tomorrow. It would have to be dire circumstances for her to kiss him like that again. And she wouldn't press him on the PDA thing. _I like you, do you like me?_ Such a simple question. But she couldn't keep giving such dangerously honest answers. Especially since she likely would be called away at some point and leave Morgan and Ellie to pick up the pieces.

She didn't know why he affected her so much, why it hurt so badly to see him deflate after their kiss. She was absolutely sure he realized it was real for a fleeting moment then doubted himself and wondered if it was not. But then her words poisoned everything.

Now as far as he was concerned he realized it was fake and kicked himself for briefly wondering if it was real. She hated herself for destroying something so beautiful.

She _did_ have training. She had been _warned_.

But Chuck was not trained and was such a sensitive soul; yet somehow something about him made her almost completely transparent to him despite a lifetime of training. She either had an overinflated opinion of her ability to deceive or he was just looking so much harder than anyone else had ever cared to. If he ever trusted what he so clearly saw she was done for. She was going to have to be much more careful. Rely on the training to protect her. To protect him.

She was the one who knew how dangerous kissing could be.

..._you must to be able to kiss someone you are not in the least truly interested in and absolutely convince them that you are _intensely_ interested in them_...

She had just never been taught how to do the opposite.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Unfortunately, that is the type of thing that will have to pass for fluff for a while. I told you I wouldn't go off the canon track but I think slip-ups were likely to happen (and will). I, like you, just always wanted them to kiss in that scene. They established a minor subplot around PDA and maintaining a cover, they have managed it before 'the incident' (a particular supply closet incident - which will have its day - comes to mind) and she always felt more than she let on and there _are_ two tiny pecks in the episode so... why not? Here they just 'over corrected'...

Raise your hand if you think Ellie could have sat across the table from Sarah and stiffed her need to doctor her injury. I see no hands. And I cannot possibly get enough sisterly Ellie / Sarah scenes. I think the actual siblings' hug scene is underrated and often forgotten. Ellie is not a nag! (Well, at least not an insufferable one.) She just loves her brother and wants him to be happy. I'm not a big fan of early Morgan but hopefully having similar protectiveness is a somewhat endearing insight into why early Morgan is kind of a dick to Sarah sometimes. And I had a whole backstory in my brain for 'The City' (seriously?) but you'll have to extrapolate it from Chuck's few comments.

I also really wanted to have an established mentoring relationship between Sarah and Roan for later scenes - more than just a guy whose 'class' she took. I hope my portrayal of what a super agent might be called upon to do wasn't too reprehensible - I, for one, would be sympathetic and appreciative of an agent who made such a sacrifice to prevent some sort of calamity or save someone's life rather than want to berate or belittle them. When I say it is extremely unlikely that such valuable resources would be utilized in such a way I mean it and have no intention of contriving such situations... for Sarah. My hands are tied in a few other cases which is part of why I spent so much time on it.

I am also aware that my interpretation (or rather my complete rearrangement) of the timing of what most will correctly guess is Sarah's impending red test is inconsistent with canon but I find the canon date (2005) inconsistent with a reputation as Graham's enforcer (so there!) - falling as it does somewhere near the transition from her CAT days to first teaming with Bryce. I refuse to believe that Graham's Enforcer used Nerf guns, water balloons and rubber knives to that point; obvious canon ramifications will be addressed at the appropriate time.

Even without the side track of seduction training I was surprised how much 'Tango' had to offer. Up next (Finally)... Carina!


	13. XIII: Party Crasher

...in which an old friend comes to visit and we revisit her first meetings with our protagonist...

Canon Reference: Opening scenes of Ep 104 (Wookiee); non-canon thereafter

Contents: Overall, this one's LONG; I strongly suggest you break it up, either after the first (31) or third (33) chapters. Five chapters; all medium-length, the first one covering canon but only up to the title card (4K words; kinda fluffy - with actual puppies - _and_ angsty, so... flangsty?) and FOUR flashback chapters (2,500 to 3,500 words each) providing a fragmented story - through vignettes with blanks to be filled in later - that is decidedly not fluffy

Long Ass A/N: I adore Carina. And it's more than the fact that Mini Anden is an international supermodel. There's something fascinating about this intense force of nature that Carina is - and that she, as a character that appeared in only four episodes, exists in a variety of forms in the collective headcanon of all Chucksters - that just fascinates me. Interpretations vary but I see her as something much, much more than just an unabashedly promiscuous woman - not that there's anything wrong with that, as they say...(and she shouldn't - and doesn't - give a shit what you or I think of her anyway)

But, beyond that, where does she come from? She couldn't have been born this way. Something had to have shaped her into this tornado of recklessness because she can't go on this way indefinitely. She's smart but still too reckless in too many ways. So what caused her to have such disregard for her own well being?

Maybe she's programmed with the most tragic back story ever...The one day she didn't do a perimeter check… her wedding day... Damn, I think that one's taken...

Because this story is mostly from Sarah's point of view rather than Chuck's, Carina will assume the mantle of BFF extraordinaire from Morgan even though she's not around much (so its odd that I start out talking so much about Morgan).

Characterizing herself as both a 'spy' and a DEA agent made me consider some 'true crime' undercover DEA stories that are truly disturbing. I wish the timing allowed some better separation from recently discussed seduction themes but melding the two ideas creates incredibly harrowing scenarios for a woman dealing with the types of men you would expect to be involved in drug smuggling and infiltrating their organizations.

I have also always thought - and after writing the following several scenes now firmly believe - that she might be just a little bit psychotic. But with a kind of gooey center if anyone could ever get past all her defenses and find the real her.

The result is probably a blend of some predictable, stylized depictions of her and hopefully some unexpected nuance that together make her something a little different.

So this is just the first layers of unravelling some of the mysteries of Carina (now THAT sounds like something Morgan would say). We will get to visit with her several more times after this but - unfortunately - not much more frequently than canon until we get to the 'after the beach' bits. Yes, I know where I'm going after canon, I just have to set my dominoes up just so. And it's a crap ton of dominoes.

This note is partly to warn you that this part became another absolute monster - nearly as long as the Tango arc but dealing with one primary topic instead of two - and this installment is one of the longest yet. Carina would be the first to agree that her awesomeness simply cannot be contained to a single chapter. She gets most of four here in this installment alone with some Sarah development as she bears witness and with more to follow.

Parts of this occur in the darker times of Sarah's career - this whole arc is relatively dark - and that nihilistic, drunken, professional bad-asses can apparently be pretty crass so the language gets pretty foul in places. Especially toward the end.

Technical Note: FAST is Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Team (the paramilitary division of the DEA), SAD is Special Activities Division (the paramilitary arm of the CIA and part of Special Operations Group, or SOG)

For my fellow Americans, Happy Columbus Day (slash Plague and Despotic Oppression Day; a rose by any other name is still a day off from work). I cannot respond directly to Guest reviews but I can choose not to be a slug even though it's a holiday and post a timely update so that Australian readers aren't up all night!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Seinfeld_, _Wreck-It Ralph_ (above), _Star Wars_ and its 'Extended Universe' (_The Han Solo Trilogy_ and other writings), James Bond (its as genericized as Kleenex, do we really have to call it out?), I don't have to call out 'Know Ya' because it doesn't exist, an unspecified Ani DiFranco song (yes, again - OK, it's _Little Plastic Castle_), _A Fish Called Wanda_, _Starship Troopers_ (2X), _Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness_, _The Princess Bride_ (yes, again), _Hitch_, _The Crow_, _Reservoir Dogs_ or _Unforgiven_ is asserted or implied. Special thanks to Mike Tyson for the title of Ch 32 (seriously, look it up).

.

* * *

Part XIII: Party Crasher

* * *

.

_"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure.  
I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle.  
But if you can't handle me at my worst,  
then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."_

\- Marilyn Monroe

.

* * *

.

031: With Friends Like These

.

En route to Maison 23, Burbank, CA; Wed Oct 10, 2007 12:18 am

.

Sarah was behind the wheel of her Porsche making her way back to her hotel room as she reflected on the evening. She thought it might have been enjoyable had it just been the two couples. She had actually been a little excited about learning even more about Chuck's childhood and Ellie should have been a fountain of information based on their previous conversations. She knew it was a bit of a double standard since she was so careful not to share anything about her own past but she was curious nonetheless.

It turned out that Chuck's best friend, Morgan was the one with all the detailed background on Chuck. She knew Morgan was as protective of Chuck as Ellie was. What she had not counted on was just how threatened Morgan was about her occupying so much of Chuck's time and - from his perspective - coming between the two lifelong friends. It was a little disturbing.

Chuck had called an end to the game himself when the questions became racier and Morgan had been a little too forthcoming about Chuck's high school dating experiences even when he had refused to write down his answer. He had hidden his face behind the answer paddle and she had been sitting on the floor beaming at him. She had a nagging feeling all night that maybe Casey was looking in on them but, in that moment, hadn't noticed Ellie smacking Morgan across the chest with her forearm to silence him.

The three of them - Ellie, Morgan and Devon - watched quietly for the few seconds as Chuck looked around the paddle and lowered it as slowly as the grin grew on his face. It was that smile of his she loved that made her look away and blush a bit herself, prompting Ellie to back up her brother and call for a switch to a different game.

Besides challenging nearly every answer she offered in their game of 'Know Ya', Morgan had also ordered their dinner. He had made a point of asking what she liked on her pizza out of Chuck's earshot. And then ignored it. It wasn't really that big a deal - she didn't mind picking the olives off except they always seemed to leave a little bit of their taste in the cheese - but he was clearly just being petty.

Even with this strange antagonism in the air, she was caught off guard by Morgan's description and the venom in the room over the question of Chuck's 'most hated person ever'. Considering the fact that both Chuck and Morgan had been late to leave the Buy More due to some trouble he had stirred up in an attempt to undermine Chuck, Harry Tang was honestly the first name that leapt to mind. He was a contemptible, petty man but Chuck and the word 'hate' simply did not go together.

Dealing with the here and now of living with the Intersect had made it easy to forget who had been responsible for sending it to Chuck in the first place. She knew Bryce had been involved in Chuck's expulsion from Stanford and had heard the basic story but Chuck had never elaborated. She should have known it was just Chuck being reluctant to bad-mouth anyone, even someone he blamed for his less than stellar career prospects before she and Casey had arrived. Not that those prospects were any improved now. Morgan's take on the situation was part of a now recurring claim of superiority in knowledge of all things Chuck.

It may have started when Ellie had mentioned to her over wine at her last visit that Chuck had grown up wanting to be the captain of the Millennium Falcon, to which Sarah - staying in the comfortable character of Sarah Walker, having indulged in a bit too much wine herself and simply not knowing the reference - couldn't stifle her question quickly enough.

What had followed was a weird argument with Morgan where he had first absently launched into a soliloquy in a altered voice starting with 'you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon...' that included references to outrunning Imperial starships and calling someone an old man while his eyes never left the video game screen. It had devolved into a strange argument over her second ill-advised comment on something she knew from some random reading a hundred lives ago - an unintentionally controversial observation: "Isn't a parsec a measure of distance?"

At Morgan's animated objection to that, Chuck had stepped in to defend her position. Chuck clarified that Han Solo had cut the length of a particular eighteen-parsec route significantly by navigating dangerously close to a black hole cluster, shortening the distance to less than twelve parsecs. He shared a smile with Sarah as he diplomatically offered that Morgan was also partly right because Han was only able to navigate the 'Falcon' - as Chuck called it - so close to the black holes because it was fast enough to overcome their gravitational pull.

He had mouthed 'but you're still right' to Sarah as Ellie snorted adorably into her wine glass. Morgan had seemed appeased but clearly seized this trivia game as his opportunity for some sort of trivial retribution.

She had known the reference vaguely even before Chuck's explanation - and had even heard Lester refer to Chuck and Morgan as Han and Chewie. Whoever that was.

She had done a little research to improve her context using a website Chuck had mentioned and was delighted to learn that the same actor who had portrayed Chuck's movie hero had later gone on to portray her favorite character as a child.

So when Morgan had started with "if Chuck is Solo..." she knew what he meant but he had lost her with "...Larkin is his Fett". She would have to do more research or see about getting her hands on a reacclimation packet on the topic - and maybe others - but, by context alone, this 'Fett' sounded like some kind of adversary or archrival. Considering she had once been partners - and more - with someone Chuck disliked so much was a little sickening.

She did have to admit, in many ways Bryce was the antithesis of Chuck. Although both were smart and handsome. Bryce was cold where Chuck was warm, brash where Chuck was humble. And if Morgan were to be believed it was Bryce who was primarily responsible for getting Chuck kicked out of Stanford. When Chuck had shared his version of that story, and she had asked Chuck whether he had stolen the tests, he had simply said that Bryce had found the tests and alerted administration. Why did she now think there was much more to the story?

And Bryce 'sexed up his girl'? She had asked for more information on this Jill Roberts, claiming it was because she needed intel on his last significant romantic interest for crafting a cover. She had been surprised and disappointed that no photographs were included - again - and asked Chuck a few subtle questions trying not to seem too eager to learn what it was he had liked about her.

Chuck had met her in his freshman year, became friends with her and hung out with her throughout college. He finally gathered enough courage to ask her out in the spring of his junior year. The relationship survived a summer with little contact while they both returned to their hometowns and became more serious when they returned to school before drifting apart somewhat even before his expulsion which she knew better than to pry about.

If he had ever considered Chuck any kind of friend, even Bryce should have known that she was off limits no matter the circumstances. Of course, this would have been right around the time Bryce was being trained as an agent. He always did fancy himself some kind of James Bond and it wouldn't surprise her if he came out of seduction training brandishing his new skills like a child with a gun. Even with all that, it was hard to conceive of Chuck hating anyone.

The fact that it was someone they both once knew - Chuck arguably more intimately than her despite the more common implications of the word - made his later questions all the more uncomfortable.

.

* * *

.

She parked her car in her reserved parking space of the underground garage and entered the hotel. Leaving the apartment Chuck shared with Ellie and Devon had been awkward. It started out that way when she said their goodbyes and Chuck offered to walk her out like the courteous boyfriend she was certain he would be under other circumstances. They had agreed to keep up the cover - that was what tonight was supposedly all about after all, despite her desire to learn more about Chuck as a child - but, once she and Ellie shared a peck on the cheek in farewell and the door closed behind them, he seemed as surprised as her to look down and see her hand in his. They both seemed to come to the same realization at the same time.

They both let go of each others' hand as if snakebit, Chuck blushing adorably and Sarah simply stunned that she hadn't consciously noticed her hand finding his. It was disconcerting how naturally things like that happened. She had sworn to herself that nothing like the out of control kiss that had happened the last time they stood by that fountain in the moonlight would happen again.

She hadn't stopped that night to consider - to calculate - well, much of anything really. But she hadn't fully considered the outcomes of that kiss (as if anything about Chuck was knowable based on her prior experiences); and that alone had made it somewhat magical. She couldn't remember the last time she had done what she wanted over what was most strategically advantageous. Especially so spontaneously.

How could something so wonderful make such a sweet man seem so dangerous?

Chuck broke the silence choosing to emphasize their successful subterfuge rather than the slightly confusing level of physical comfort they seemed to feel around each other in brief, unguarded moments. She chose to let him believe he had crossed some invisible line and she had forgiven him for it.

It made her feel like every bit the liar she was but it was easier than trying to rationalize to herself why a simple touch from him was so thrilling. Maybe it was because it was forbidden. That was all she could come up with considering she had only ever felt such a rush when her life had been in danger. Why else would a simple touch - or an ill-advised kiss that blurred the line between cover and reality the last time she had said goodnight to him on his doorstep - both take her breath away and make her pulse race?

She was equally stunned by his desire to know everything there was to know about her. Just as she had set out to learn about him. There were definitely things in her past she didn't want to reveal to him. Things she had done that he didn't seem to consider her capable of doing. Things that would - and should - make him look at her differently.

More than that she simply didn't know what to think about the fact that he wanted to know her story at all. All her senses screamed that there was some underhanded scheme to use it against her but her rational side knew it was probably a desire as innocent as everything else about him. She reasoned to herself that if he knew enough of the things she didn't want him to know - even a few of them - he would probably lose interest in the rest.

She had been relieved to learn that, despite his curiosity about her, Chuck wasn't capable of accessing any files in the Intersect about her on demand. She did, however, wonder whether it truly didn't work that way or he somehow deliberately prevented himself from accessing it. She wondered whether his good nature could outweigh such strong curiosity.

But then she smiled as she remembered just who she was thinking about and suspected his inability to access the file - deliberate or not - may have been more than a little bit influenced by his knowledge that she didn't want him to access it. In fact, his comment may have been his way of letting her know that. After all, she was the one who advised him not to show all his cards when it came to what the Intersect could do and what Chuck could do with it.

Maybe it was guilt over an evening of sharing stories about each other where most of her answers were evasive in some way. Even the story about her and her sister suffering horrible sunburn when she was nine was borrowed from someone else's experience. She had left home well before the age of nine and the story of her own early childhood was something she didn't intend to share. With anyone. Ever.

But as she pressed the call button for the elevator and wondered why she had foolishly thrown him a bone by offering that he 'could just ask' in response to his desire to know everything there was to know about her. What the fuck had she been thinking? Of course, he went right for kill shot. She was continually underestimating his keen observational powers, especially when it came to her. He chose the one question she had even more foolishly not anticipated and - given her new knowledge of Bryce's status as 'the Fett to Chuck's Solo' - she certainly didn't want to give a straight answer.

_How close were the two of you, exactly?_

She kept telling herself that she hadn't lied. Bryce was her partner. And they were never really close enough to be considered friends. She leaned on her favorite and most useful piece of advice from the con man who raised her: _There are all kinds of ways to lie._

It was the lie of omission that was bothering her. She knew exactly what he was really asking and she didn't know why she didn't want to just tell him. Why did she not want to damage a relationship that she was too afraid to pursue anyway? If he reacted badly to the truth, it would only simplify their situation. Drive him away as many other truths about her would. She should have just put it out in the open but now that she had avoided an opportunity to clarify it seemed like a bigger deal.

She exited the elevator on the tenth floor and took the stairs back down to her floor out of habit. As she did so she thought that he seemed to have been letting her off the hook when he changed the topic to the sex questions that had caused so many awkward moments between them during their game even without Morgan's interjections.

But maybe he was bringing it up because she seemed to have passed some sort of test by not saying that she and Bryce had been lovers. Something she had never really advertised but didn't care one way or another if people realized before. People whose opinions didn't matter to her. She couldn't shake the feelings of guilt over cheating on that test.

As she opened the door to her room she smiled at the way he had described taking it slow - their agreed upon reason for any questions about not having answers to the sex questions - as being prudent. There were so many unconventional reasons not letting a physical relationship develop was the prudent approach. No matter how much her heart lightened with every kiss or touch between them that she justified to herself as part of their cover. Even though when he pulled his hand away from hers after Ellie closed the door tonight she felt her heart sink. But now she continued to smile because she knew someone who would interpret her prudence as simply being a prude.

.

* * *

.

The one thing in her room that could be considered a personal touch is her goldfish. She had been resistant when Chuck had dragged her to the pet store on one of their cover lunch dates last weekend. But, as it turned out he knew, it was adoption day and there were two dozen puppies and a few older dogs there.

With his long legs, Chuck had simply stepped over the collapsible pen that was up to her hip. Chuck had climbed in to play with a boxer puppy. She was adorable and, Sarah noted as Chuck knelt to pet her, equally lanky with massive paws and long legs splayed out in all directions. As she watched all of the worry and anxiety melt from his face she noted that Chuck was just as adorable.

When he urged her to join him she half-heartedly resisted preferring to watch him instead until he reached over toward her. He was having too much fun to notice the conflict in her heart. There was a permanently ingrained self-defense trigger as well as a reminiscence of the last time he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her close. The two sensations were battling for control as he grasped her gently by the hips again. The resulting confusion meant that when he unexpectedly said "Jump!" she simply did so, trusting him completely as he joyfully guided her into the pen with him.

They both instinctively bowed their backs - him for balance, her for distance - even though his embrace was, like his desire to know more about her, as innocent as the man himself. He was too busy making sure he didn't trod on or lower her onto any of the puppies nipping at his heels to see her looking down at him as he guided her jump and held her close before lowering her. All the while - from the moment her feet left the ground to the moment they returned to it - she watched the delighted expression on his face - something she had only seen on that first night. On what he believed to be a real date with her.

She was equally thrilled by the closeness as on that first night - the heat of his body and firm but careful touch - the clean, earthy-citrusy smell of him in sharp contrast to the general pet store smell and few messes of the untrained puppies. It all reminded her of their first night - and the hidden strength of him - along with something new and different.

Here he was happy and unencumbered. He was giddily introducing puppies to children, restraining the more exuberant puppies and demonstrating to gently encourage their first bold pets of a dog. Here he was the joyful man he should have been. Sitting on the concrete floor with his long legs spread out in front of him playing with whatever puppy was drawn to him - which was all of them. He was always boyishly handsome but here... on the concrete floor of a pet store... here he was beautiful.

He asked her opinion on certain dogs oblivious to her careful observation of him. This was where she learned of the cocker spaniel named Peaches. The fact that Morgan had known that Chuck misremembered the exact breed (or that young Chuck didn't know the distinction of a springer spaniel) or that Morgan had known that Ellie had replaced the dog without Chuck's knowledge - later lying about the first dog's fate when he notice the difference - didn't mean he knew Chuck better. Not in this.

The actual facts were irrelevant. Chuck had shared his memories with her - flawed as they might be - and nothing could take that gift from her.

She wished she could bring herself to reciprocate and tell him about her own childhood dog - say something of the same importance. Especially when he was playing with the two golden retriever puppies or mentioned that he might one day want a dog bigger than a cocker (or springer as it later turned out) now that he was bigger and had always thought he would get a golden one day or when he convinced a young family that the eight year old rescue golden - orphaned by an elderly owner - was amazingly sweet and the perfect family dog for as long as they could have him. Goldens seemed to be everywhere.

Instead she lied - again. She didn't know why other than it was just too painful a memory and allowed him to believe that she had never owned a pet. That had either been a mistake or a delightful accident as finding what he believed to be her 'first' pet had then become his mission.

The store was more than accommodating as they praised him for what was already at midday their most successful adoption day this year. Praise he, of course, deflected. They were already late returning from lunch to their respective jobs but he would not rest until they settled on a truly beautiful goldfish which the store manager agreed to hold to be picked up later - one that defied her mental image of the simple pet - and the bare minimum necessary equipment rather than the 'more humane' larger tanks which the salesperson had managed to make her feel a little guilty about. Chuck had been humming a song the whole time, occasionally interjecting lyrics about being repeatedly surprised by the same plastic castle because goldfish have no memory.

He told her the song was about people too; among other things, getting caught up in the repetition of their day to day, not seeing what is right in front of them. She loved when he talked about music. Or anything he was passionate about really. She suspected he was talking about his retail 'career' but she didn't think her so-called life of adventure was really much better. Aside from the occasional burst of adrenaline, her missions were remarkably repetitive at this point with little time available to explore new locales and no interest remaining in doing so. Chuck was a welcome surprise everyday for as long as he was stuck with her as part of his life.

She smiled at the memory of Chuck suggesting they taste test the different fish foods - going as far as sprinkling a bit on his index finger before she called his bluff and offered to taste at the same time - as she grabbed the can from her dresser to drop a little in the bowl before she went to bed.

She had already missed a day feeding him - she had neglected to ask but declared him a 'him' even though Chuck had suggested she name him 'Wanda' for some reason - but he didn't seem any worse for wear. She had changed into her robe and on her way to the shower she sprinkled in her usual amount of food and considered that a dog wouldn't be so forgiving. Though they were more loyal and more permanent. Neither was something she could see being a part of her life.

The parallels were not lost on her. Herself the beautiful but temporary. Him the adorable and undyingly loyal. Chuck deserved someone who could offer that in return and it had shattered her when she asked whether he was considering a dog. He had said "not any more", citing the orphaned dog who had outlived his owner. A healthy, twenty-six year old man shouldn't be worried about a dog outliving him.

As Sarah turned on the water the reflection in the shower tap gave the intruder away. A bar of soap quickly dropped inside a stocking was the closest available weapon. But as she swung the makeshift weapon and began fighting in earnest she recognized the assailant almost immediately despite being covered from head to toe. She still telegraphed that punch. Sarah thought she had taught her better than that.

Though some of her thoughts over the last few moments had not been vocalized, Sarah still thought to herself "speak of the devil, and she shall appear". The fight extended throughout the bedroom upsetting furniture and her goldfish's bowl. When he spilled onto the carpet she was stupidly distracted - by the welfare of a fucking fish - enough to catch a wild elbow to the nose.

If she hadn't known her assailant just from that punch she would have been certain when the masked intruder bothered to save Irving.

.

* * *

.

032: Fade into Bolivian

.

SAD operating base, Afghanistan; December 2001

.

Without question, CIA Specialist Rachel Edwards was among the best there was. After completion of their more conventional CIA training, the male agents completing their training around that same time had been sent to train and serve with various strike forces across various services while the female agents were tasked out to reconnaissance and infiltration missions. Rachel Edwards was the first agent to ever ask 'Why?'. Why couldn't a woman be a part of one of those elite forces? Or at least the first who didn't back down.

She had the good sense to voice this opinion privately, requesting a meeting with the Deputy Director after being informed of her first posting. She knew she was good enough because she knew about Gunny's recommendation and, if her recently completed mission in Paris was any indication of what would be expected of her, she would prefer it be in a war zone where things made a little more sense. Graham did not appreciate her insubordination at first but humored her by saying "It would take a very special woman." Her response had been arrogant bordering on insubordinate but it did the trick.

"And why was it you recruited me again?"

And so after some further discussion her posting was amended to include the specialized training usually reserved for her male counterparts on a trial basis. She was angered by - but chose not to argue with - the decision to provide that training in discontinuous modules. She knew they were anticipating and planning for her failure and that was enough to motivate her to persevere. None of her male colleagues welcomed her presence in the slightest and the other trainees tried to break her will as much as the instructors did.

While the probability of failure may have been in the back of his mind, Graham's primary reason for the disjointed schedule was to allow her participation in covert ops. The following few months saw her alternating between Eastern European deployments on the type of reconnaissance and infiltration missions that she was assured were the more typical assignments for a female agent with her skill set and two week training modules. Halfway through the planned training she was fast-tracked to serve on a probationary basis.

Between the psychological demands of her more typical and highly distasteful missions and the physical and psychological demands of her strike force training, the two combined was the most grueling experience that she could have possibly imagined and that was after over three years of intense training.

The best of the best of the CIAs new recruits were unknowingly competing for a rotational position in the elite Special Activities Division (SAD) made up almost entirely of former members of other US Special Forces and specializing in rapid deployments against relatively unknown levels of enemy opposition.

When Rachel became the only woman to ever serve in the SAD the only person not surprised, other than herself, was Deputy Director Graham. He was learning that the best way to accomplish anything was to tell this particular agent that it couldn't be done. Her only regret was that, due to the gaps in her training schedule, members of each class she participated in had likely assumed she had washed out and she would never be able to rub her success in the collective faces of those who had dared to doubt her.

They also didn't know that her specialized training from her time prior to The Facility made it possible to skip certain modules entirely so she had, in fact, leapfrogged many of her detractors and achieved her status before the few of them who had gone on to successfully complete their own training.

In addition to being the first woman even considered for the elite force, she was also the youngest person regardless of gender to serve in such a capacity though no one other than Deputy Director Graham knew it. Despite her appearance, everyone reasoned that she was older than she looked assuming the usual timelines for a college career and the more typical length of training but she was only twenty - a fact she kept to herself. Even Graham thought she was twenty-two.

She thought nothing of it. Eighteen year old recruits of the more conventional military ranks were doing similar things at the age of eighteen. They were killing and being killed. She told herself that the fact that she had left a woman she didn't know lying dead in a Parisian street didn't make her any more affected by such things than these new comrades in arms. But it certainly was easier to shoot someone who was shooting at you.

If anyone ever got a hold of her so-called service record they would think they learned that she was twenty six but no one ever would - everything about her completely fabricated service history was code word classified. All the men in her unit were veterans of various special forces groups and were anywhere from eight to twenty years older than her.

She had fully expected to have to prove herself to them and they didn't disappoint. It was like she had gone right back to The Facility. The boys quickly admitted she could handle herself but still warned her not to slow them down.

.

* * *

.

SAD operating base, Afghanistan; January 2002

.

She now knew it was a sign of respect but she hated the name they had bestowed upon her: The Reaper's Mistress.

She had taken point from a wounded comrade and single handedly annihilated a nest of twelve insurgents in close quarters among ruined buildings armed only with an M32 grenade launcher loaded with incendiary rounds and her M45 pistol. Slipping around corners and up through holes in ceilings raining death down from above. After hearing the screaming and seeing the look in her eyes when she emerged from the walls of flame unscathed no one questioned her presence in the unit again.

The name was bestowed over celebratory beers as the rest of the team relived the mission and her haunting emergence from the flames. She didn't share their enthusiasm but didn't want to disrupt this apparent rite of passage. She was finally accepted as an equal even if she couldn't shake the memory of the chemical smell of the flames mingled with the smell of burning flesh. She wasn't sure she would ever be able to eat any roasted meat ever again.

Since she was still splitting her time between her SAD strike team and various infiltration and intelligence gathering missions, she initially worried that there was an insult in her call-sign somewhere about the nature of some of those other missions - and the other unrelated code name she had earned on those missions - but everyone on her team said it with a straight face.

They didn't seem to know what she did when she was called away for a 'spook mission' as they called them. Since they were recruited from the military specifically for their combat skills it was entirely plausible that they didn't know about the dirtier side of the business. It bothered her that it didn't bother her when she thought of those missions as dirtier than killing.

It didn't help that her handle was often shortened to simply 'Mistress' so their radio chatter sometimes took on S&amp;M undertones. Anyone not part of their group who snickered at that usually got an accidental rifle butt behind the ear as they were unloading after a mission. Usually hard enough to land them in the infirmary and usually from Ramirez - one of the two squad leaders who had a sweet but misguided protective streak when it came to her.

She had taken him aside a few times and told him that he was making her look bad. It didn't sink in until he took a glancing round to the helmet and one in the leg during a mission. He was one of the smaller men on the team but she dumped both their gear, threw him in a fireman's carry and fast-walked him two hundred yards to their extraction point. If it were one of the bigger guys like Duncan or if she hadn't dumped the gear she wasn't sure if she could have done it but it earned her a lot of street cred.

She surprised them all again in a later mission when their pilot was hit as he landed - once in the left arm and twice in the left lung while landing at their extraction point. She wasted no time throwing him in the back for her boys to take care of his wounds and assuming the pilot seat. Her boys didn't know she had any pilot training and were too shocked to object as she roughly lifted off, spun 120 degrees to the north and accelerated to top speed in what seemed like one sickening maneuver.

Her nerves started to become unsettled when she was maintaining level flight but she didn't show it. She had logged minimal basic flight time focusing more on takeoffs and landings for emergency situations only. She had deemed this an emergency. After a twenty minute flight, she managed to set the copter down relatively gently while her boys - who apparently had all seen a war movie called 'Apocalypse Now' - belted out a god awful, tone-deaf rendition of 'Ride of the Valkyrie' which earned her a second nickname.

They used the two names interchangeably but had she ever been asked her preference it would have been 'Valkyrie'.

She looked into it later and discovered the movie in question was based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. That coupled with their overly enthusiastic quotes about loving 'the smell of napalm in the morning' convinced her. It was a story of a descent into madness and savagery she had already read and she sometimes felt she was living it. She had no inclination to watch it.

With one exception no one had noticed or objected when she started thinking of them and referring to them as her boys. The exception was the other squad leader, Lieutenant David Connors who said she should call them 'her men'; she replied that if they ever stopped acting like boys she would consider it. Where most of the others were generally wiry and rugged, Connors was one of the bigger men and more classically handsome. At 28 he was also the youngest of the group besides her.

He hadn't been blatant about it but while it had escaped no one's attention that she was a woman, Connors was obviously interested in her. If she were honest with herself even though he wasn't her usual type the feeling was mutual, though she suspected it was as much curiosity as actual interest. He was the only one of her boys who could get away with that comment but she had worked too hard to prove herself to allow something like that to derail her career.

.

* * *

.

SAD operating base, Ecuador; February 2002

.

No one was happy about it when they were reassigned to an airbase in Ecuador that was supposed to carry out only counter-narcotics surveillance flights and were informed that they would be working with the DEA over the next several months. Doubly so for Rachel when they were informed that the agent was a woman and Rachel would be responsible for her while they were on this joint operation. Why should this new addition get all the benefit of the reputation that she had worked so hard to build? Or worse yet, come in to their team and undermine her standing?

Their initial meeting did not go well.

Her name was Danielle and she was tall. Very tall. Slightly taller than Rachel and taller than most of the men on the team especially in those four-inch heels. Rachel opted for tactical gear and combat boots around her team and the way this new arrival was walking - in a barely buttoned blouse displaying a red lace bra for anyone who cared to look and an unusually short pencil skirt with her runway strut and flipping her long, wavy and cheating toward almost entirely red, auburn hair - reinforced every one of Rachel's low expectations.

"Special Agent Danielle Lassiter, DEA." she introduced herself as she came to a stop on front of them with her hands on her hips and smiled, scanning her icy blue eyes slowly over the group. The boys ate it up. "But you gentlemen can call me Dani. I'm supposed to report to a Major Rico?"

"I'm Rico. You wanna tell us what the fuck we're doing in South America when all the action is in Afghanistan, Agent Lassiter?"

She noticed his emphasis on her professional designation, silently appreciated it despite her permission to address her otherwise and switched jarringly to an extremely professional tone as she informed them that they would be targeting drug cartels in Bolivia where a few upstart groups are getting more and more bold and described the convoluted suspected connection that warranted the CIA's interest and support.

They are to train and plan together for three weeks before she headed out to Miami to engage the known players, identify any unknowns and identify their contacts with the Bolivian cartels, trace their transport routes through the porous border with Argentina to distribution channels on the Atlantic, determine what connection they may have with middle eastern terrorist financing and disrupt that income stream.

Rico was all business and - to what appeared to be the DEA agent's dismay based on her exaggerated pout at his dismissive tone - not nearly as distracted by the agent's good looks as the rest of the men. "Fine. Get outta that crap and into some fatigues. You're meeting with me and my squad leaders in an hour. Edwards can get you set up."

Rachel helped Agent Lassiter collect the odd pairing of a duffle bag and a Louis Vuitton carry all and they walked from the hangar to the separate barracks Rachel had entirely to herself. Rachel didn't really know why the DEA agent's attire and manner bothered her so. It wasn't even really that bad. Maybe it was because she tried so hard to keep her multiple identities separate. But when they reached the barracks after a short walk and entered, Rachel started shedding her gear and changing into fresh clothes, slamming her locker and multiple drawers more than possibly necessary as she lit into the new arrival without even the curtesy of looking at her even as she set aside some of her spare clothing for her.

"I don't know what you were thinking coming here dressed like that. You don't get any points for T&amp;A around here. In fact, its the best way to make sure you aren't taken seriously. These are my guys - they're my family - and I've proven I can be one of them. You want to fit in around here you do your job. You don't do your job, I'll shoot you myself."

When Rachel finished and finally did look at her, Dani was sitting on one of the nineteen vacant bunks that wasn't Rachel's with her head down and hands in her lap and said in an almost whisper "I'm so sorry. I didn't even know there was a woman on the team. I didn't mean to cause trouble for you. I came straight from another mission and I guess I'm still...in character." Rachel almost didn't hear the next part. "You don't know what it's like."

Well, fuck.

Rachel felt terrible. She knew exactly what kind of mission Dani was talking about. And she was DEA. She probably dealt with a whole different class of asshole than the wannabe debonaire industrialist or roguish soldier of fortune or fill-in-the-adventurous-ideal types Rachel was used to dealing with. She sat across from her, reached out and put her hand on top of Dani's. "Hey..." she offered softly. "I do know...I'm CIA and I don't spend all my time here."

Dani slowly looked up at that and immediately saw that they understood each other.

Rachel continued. "If you let it, this place can be a safe haven from all that. They put me through the ringer when I got here but I never got the impression it was because I was a woman. Or not just that anyway. The boys only care about the person who has their back being the best at what they do. I'm sorry that I assumed the worst of you but having that safe haven is...important to me. I would prefer they not know too much about the other stuff."

Rachel withdrew her hand and they sat silently for a few minutes before she asked "Bad one?"

Dani knew what she was asking and accepted the olive branch. She didn't give a thought about classified information or need-to-know as the hand near her throat idly fiddled with a small crucifix on a thin gold chain. "Yeah. Heroin ring. Chile. I didn't know we were headed out to his production facility. Middle of the jungle. We probably wouldn't have found it otherwise. But I was stuck out there for almost a week before I was able to get my hands on a radio and call in the strike."

Dani didn't share that she had narrowly escaped. She had called in the strike danger close. She wasn't going to stay there another second. Her host / captor was chasing her through the jungle, fortunately having been caught briefly on the same hole in the fence that she had slipped through. She had outrun the blast. He nearly had but had been badly burned and thrown into a tree by the blast. At least she had the satisfaction of spitting in his eye as he died.

The DEA agent continued, "I didn't intend for that to happen but... I guess sometimes it just doesn't go the way you planned. You know how it is."

But Rachel now realized that she didn't. Not really. "What about your backup? Your team?"

Dani looked up again with a puzzled expression. "That's not always an option. If I have a solid lead, I can set up a a strike team but usually it's just me. Maybe I'll plant some bugs if I can get them in safely but it's too dangerous to wear a wire. I perform without a net." and she spread her arms dramatically in a mock-bow.

"I'm sorry. I can't imagine."

"Sure you can. But I suggest you don't. I can't believe I've lasted this long. I didn't think I would get to see this birthday. But if you want to make it up to me maybe you could tell me a little about that yummy Lieutenant Connors. Maybe introduce us outside a briefing or something?" Rachel thought she had schooled her reaction to that but apparently not well enough. "Unless... I'm sorry if you-"

"No. Don't be. I mean, yeah, he's cute but I don't wanna get involved with anyone on my squad. I think it's a bad idea."

"But bad ideas can be so fun!"

Rachel couldn't help but laugh at that. "He's all yours. I saw him watching you." She hadn't even been jealous. It wasn't as though she had done anything other than try to be one of the boys herself. Why wouldn't this red headed bombshell turn his head? It wasn't as though she intended on doing anything about it and the prospect had certainly lightened her new friend's mood.

"Yeah? Happy Birthday to me!" But a sudden thought had made her realize why it might be a bad idea. "He doesn't know what we do does he? What I'll be doing when I gather the intel for our raids?"

Rachel's missions hadn't risen to the level of what Dani had just described and, even though they weren't idiots, still she didn't want her boys knowing that side of things. She responded with just a shake of her head before elaborating. "Even the CIA keeps that sort of thing quiet. And it goes both ways. See this scar?"

Rachel raised her shirt to show her ribcage on her right side, nothing but an expanse of smooth, creamy skin. At Dani's puzzled look she explained. "Shrapnel. Not too bad but nasty looking. But you'd never know it. My people know how to put their dolls back together. But the guys on my team - they know I do some shady stuff - but not how far it sometimes goes."

"Good. That's good. This one was a real piece of work. His last thoughts were of gutting me. Maybe when this is all done..." Dani had averted her eyes again but Rachel had caught an important detail.

She smiled when she asked "_Last_ thoughts?"

"Oh yeah." Dani's eyes rose again to meet Rachel's and she finally smiled back.

"I think we'll get along just fine, Agent Lassiter."

"Dani. Call me Dani. It's not my name but I'll answer to it."

"OK DEA, but only if you call me Rachel. It's not my name but I'll answer to it."

"Sounds good...CIA."

.

* * *

.

033: Sins of the Past

.

SAD operating base, Ecuador, May 2002

.

Rachel and Dani were lounging against the ring ropes of the makeshift sparring ring set up inside one of the unused hangars while sipping at bottles of water that were sweating nearly as much as they were when Rachel offered yet another piece of constructive criticism. "You're still telegraphing that punch. You're not winding up so much but you're still dipping your shoulder."

Dani rolled her eyes and sighed. Rachel redefined 'perfectionist'. Dani had been training with Rachel's SAD unit for three months now when she wasn't gathering intel for their next raid. She had successfully implemented her plan in Miami and later in Lima, La Paz and Buenos Aires. Lately Rachel had taken to joining her in a completely different sort of uniform and was shocked at how quickly situations devolved into private parties in windowless strongholds that made for the worst tactical situations. She didn't know if she had been a help or a hindrance to their primary mission but she had kept her friend out of situations the other agent seemed to have lost the capacity to recognize. Or worse, had accepted to some degree.

At every turn they had launched crippling assaults on drug gang strongholds. The surviving groups consolidated control over productions and distribution and the link Dani had been angling for had been uncovered. The distribution network was affiliated with the heroin trade out of Afghanistan helping to fund and equip the Taliban through the few elusive remnants who had not fled to Pakistan. Rachel had decided to ramp up Dani's training in hopes that she could be better prepared when she wasn't there to watch the other agent's back.

Rachel had been impressed with the other agent's language skills. She was fluent in Spanish, although her dialects weren't clean, and passable in Portuguese. She also spoke Swedish rather well due to an immigrant grandmother. Something they shared as Rachel had learned a fair bit of her Polish from her own grandmother. Dani shared a lot of foul language and odd sayings that had not been part of her training in that language and Rachel taught her a little bit of Polish.

She had 'passed' Rachel's assessments last week but Rachel just liked having another woman to spar with. Rachel could hold her own against any man and wipe the mat with most but for some reason had slightly less definitive success against other women and smaller, quicker male opponents. Emphasis on fighting larger, stronger opponents throughout her extensive training seemed to have left a gap.

When Rachel had shared that concern a few weeks ago Dani compared it to "a giant fighting just one person after specializing in battling gangs for local charities for a long time" and just smirked at Rachel. Rachel had been so shocked by the bizarre analogy that she dropped her guard and got tagged by a jab to the temple leaving Dani to prance around the ring with her arms raised, smiling over her shoulder while she swayed her hips in a rare victory celebration.

Here in the present, Rachel had been soundly kicking Dani's ass and still critiquing her own performance for over an hour before allowing this little water break. "Don't think I'm not appreciative of the tip - of aaaaaall the tips - but seriously, its a flaw that no one but you would notice or be able to take advantage of. How'd you get so good anyway?"

"Same way you get to Carnegie Hall." Rachel smiled.

"Smart ass." Dani sighed but smiled back. "But why'd you join the CIA in the first place?"

"Sins of the past. Penance I guess." Rachel answered partly-truthfully - not specifying whose sins and without meeting her eyes as she good-naturedly flipped off one of the airmen who had been sitting and watching the two women clad in sports bras and biker shorts a little too attentively while they were fighting. He just smiled sheepishly and made his way to the showers.

"How's that working out for you?"

"OK I suppose. I've stopped some bad people from doing a lot of bad things. But sometimes I feel like I've broken a hell of a lot of eggs to make a tiny, pitiful omelette."

"Ever look in the mirror and wonder who's looking back at you?" Rachel was starting to get a little uncomfortable with this line of conversation but it seemed like Dani was working herself up to something. Rachel looked over at her but Dani had suddenly become very interested in an invisible speck of something on the mat near her feet.

"I guess so. But then I've always felt that way. Even before I joined up." But that was a story for another time. Or not. Before she would even consider sharing more, Rachel needed more information about the woman next to her. "How about you? How'd you get involved in the deep cover game?"

"I had a sister." The past tense was not lost on Rachel but she had asked some form of the question that Dani had apparently been hoping for and the flood gates opened while she continued to inspect the still-invisible item of interest near her foot.

"A big sister. We went everywhere together. One summer..." she smiled "...I was nine and we were sunbathing in the driveway - she was trying to impress some guy and I wanted to be just like her. I remember popping up when we heard this loud noise. One of the neighborhood boys was picking up his bike. He had run into a parked car. I remember her waving at him and him turning beet red. She was only thirteen, maybe fourteen, and just knew how to make guys react like that. God, she was just so fucking confident, you know? I wanted to be her.

"And she never made me feel like a burden or anything. I kinda ruined her plans that day. I had grabbed baby oil instead of the suntan lotion. You see how fair I am, she was worse. We absolutely fried. But she wasn't even mad at me. She took care of me even though it hurt to move. She was more a mother to me than my mother ever was.

"When we were older, like four years later, she had a boyfriend that she ran off to be with. Good looking guy. Seemed like he was always really nice to her. I remember he always brought me candy or some little silly present and mussed my hair while my mom and sister were screaming at each other. Like I was a little kid - pissed me off to no end - mostly because I wanted so badly to be all grown up like my sister - but I didn't think he was anything but a nice guy.

"It was pretty bad at home and I was angry at her for leaving. But mostly for not taking me with her. I should have realized how much she got in my mom's way before she wasn't there to take the heat off me. They did pretty good for a while, seemed like she was living a fairy tale for the first year or so. I still wanted to be her. Then the same old story. He got into drugs. Then he got her into drugs. Then he got into debt to some bad people to keep them in drugs. I didn't see her as much. When I did, she looked...she looked like hell. I begged her to stop - to just come home and let me take care of her for once. I was almost sixteen by then.

"He started dealing to pay off part of the debt then asking my sister to do a few things she didn't want to do to pay off the rest. Ended up robbing houses and whoring her out. Things went downhill fast. I didn't see her again for about eight months until they found her dead in a condemned house with a needle in her arm. She had been there for... for a while. He just left her there. Like that. For what they figured was about three weeks. Mom fell out at the morgue - I told them I was eighteen and I ID'd her."

"I'll never forget what she looked like. What that man and those drugs had done to her. As broke as they were she was still wearing this..." she held the crucifix around her neck out slightly. "It was our grandmother's. I don't know how she held on to it or why he didn't take it. He either panicked and never came back or she just died alone.

"I saw him at the funeral. He wasn't looking at me like a little kid anymore. He was looking at me like a lottery ticket. Tried to hook up with me. At my sister's funeral." Rachel was just letting her talk but knew Dani was struggling with this part of her story when she took a long sip from her water bottle before continuing.

"They found him dead behind a dumpster a few weeks later with his throat cut. There wasn't much of an investigation." Rachel noted the way the tendons in the DEA agent's neck tightened at that and the way she clenched her fists hard enough that her arms were shaking. And somehow she just knew.

"I may or may not have been a bit of a party girl once I got away from home. Maybe even before I left home but I always kept my grades up - school was my lottery ticket. I was smart enough to get into Georgetown and even got a partial scholarship. Busted my ass waitressing and modeling a little to pay for the rest. I knew I wanted to get into law enforcement but somehow I got on the DEA's radar and it was like it was meant to be. I would get to go after the people who flooded the streets with the crap that killed my sister.

"I signed up, got fingerprinted, submitted a DNA sample and dove into my training. I had hoped to get on one of the FAST teams - kinda like what you have here. But near the end of my training at Quantico they pulled me aside and said they had a better use for my talents. That I was a... 'unique candidate' was the phrase they used. They also made it _extremely_ clear that they knew some things that they could make go away.

"So I ended up becoming an undercover agent. Something a little different than the description they put on the recruitment pamphlets. Infiltrating drug rings and taking them down from the inside. It sounded great on paper. They said it was because a woman can so easily get into a position of trust. I found out that meant a position where they can hear things. And that position usually meant something dirty. I also quickly found out that things can go downhill fast. Especially when you're dealing with the type of men who think 'No' is code for 'I wish you'd try harder'. Or worse, the ones who just take what they want.

"I started out just working the party circuit in Miami and New York. Getting to know a guy who knew a guy. I knew the modeling lingo so I played that angle. It wasn't so bad, most of the lower level guys were easy to lead on and eager to show off. After a while I ended up at one party where the big man in charge decided he wanted this one girl. She wasn't even saying no, just wanted to do a couple of lines first. He blew her head off for making him wait with the biggest handgun I'd ever seen before or since just for putting him off. Then he pulled the hammer back and pointed it at the only other girl there.

"You're only supposed to actually do drugs if you have no choice. If someone will kill you if you don't. That happened a lot. Or I let myself believe it did. Then I did it just to get through. I started out trying to get back at the types of people who turned my sister into... someone I didn't recognize. Before I knew it, I had let them do to me what he had done to her. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. I...I don't have an-...I don't have many friends."

Dani took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Rachel stood from their slouch against the ropes and stood in front of her friend.

"Me either. But you do now. If... If you want. And I can keep training you. At least I can help you never feel like you have to let that kind of thing happen again."

Dani took another long drink of water before she continued "That would be nice. Don't think I didn't notice how you've been looking out for me. I've got a weird feeling about this one though. And I guess I just wanted someone to know - know why I've done the things I have if this all goes to shit. But that would be great. All of it."

Rachel suspected that she knew what was motivating this confession. Dani had the look of someone who had seen too much. She was used up and looking for a way out. She asked her a question she had once asked someone else. "How will you ever be done?"

"Hit 'em hard enough to change the world. Something big enough that it justifies everything I've already sacrificed. I think we might be able to do that in Afghanistan if I'm right about who's pulling the strings. Maybe we can hit them hard enough to make it all worthwhile. Or at least worth something."

As was her habit, Dani was playing with the small crucifix around her neck. "Do you think I can ever be forgiven? For all the things I've done?"

"I hope so." was Rachel's response as she thought about a woman laying dead on the streets of Paris and men burning alive.

"Either way, when we finish this one, I'm done. The people who recruited me have moved on and I've been laying some ground work. I think I can get out of it now. If not, then fuck them. Maybe CNN would like to tell the world how the war on drugs is really being fought. I'm done either way. I don't care anymore. I've been doing this for far too long. Maybe I can get a nice office job or a state-side inspections gig and keep on feeding my pension. Hopefully find a nice, sweet guy who doesn't care about the things I've done. Or is smart enough to not want to know. Raise some kids. Lots and lots of kids."

At that, for the first time since she shifted from sharing her history to sharing her hopes and dreams, Dani looked up with what Rachel vaguely recognized as hope sparkling in her icy blue eyes and smiled. "I've always wanted a big family. Too many kids in the world have parents who don't deserve them."

She looked off into the distance wistfully, focusing on nothing significant that Rachel could see for several seconds before she whispered barely louder than a breath.

"Just one more mission and I can get started on a real life."

.

* * *

.

034: N.A.F.O.D.

.

Heathrow Airport, London, Oct 2003

.

"I thought I rated better than babysitting duty, sir."

Over a year ago she had made a decision while on a mission gone bad and killed everyone in the palatial house in the course of securing her objective. It was the end of all hesitation in that regard. The first in Paris, all the enemy personnel while serving in her SAD unit and a handful more in that shit storm in Pakistan had just been appetizers. The first was panic, then self-preservation then cold-blooded revenge. By the time she stepped into that house - prepared to lead on her target long enough to get a look at the layout and drop a few listening devices before her backup team caused a disturbance - she had been primed and her fuse lit.

When her abort code went unanswered, the panic she might have expected never set in. Her training took over. She was a juggernaut of destruction and for those few minutes she was invincible. The first few times had been sickening. The next few became routine. Then it became liberating. Recently, it was intoxicating. There was no one on the planet who could hurt her and there was nothing that she feared anymore.

She retained the discipline of those first few assignments. The ones where she waited like an attack dog for a single word from her handlers: "Execute". Like an actress who only responds to "Action" she acted out her scenes the way she arranged them well after the need had passed for a handler to speak the command. For a while she maintained the habit and whispered it to herself.

Even now she stilled herself, controlled her breathing and mentally shut down anything resembling humanity or compassion before she struck. She was the best in the world at what she did, which made her even more bewildered by her new assignment.

She opened the folder to find a thin file with only listings of trainings and her associated proficiency - mostly attack skills with very little in the way of subtlety. If the file could be believed, the woman was a couple of years older than her which meant they should have relatively similar length of experience. She would have to assess her capabilities herself. There was no name and no photograph. This agent was considered an Alpha Operative - a woman with no attachments or history. Like her. But what was concerning was the red stamp across the top of the first page that read simply "N.A.F.O.D."

It was usually reserved for navy fliers. The hot dogs who had such little regard for their own well being that, no matter their skill level, the US government no longer trusted them with multi-million dollar aircraft. Like everything else, it came down to resource management. It was an unofficial psychological designation that appeared in no handbooks, it had simply come into being.

The acronym stood for "No Apparent Fear of Death". Most wore it like a badge of honor - it did sound pretty bad-ass - despite the fact that it was considered a black mark. Which only reinforced the pathology of the designation. It represented someone who didn't care about anything even though they were cognitively aware of the consequences of their actions. She reconsidered what it was that she herself was still afraid of. There had to be something if she considered someone who truly feared nothing to be a risk.

"You know I prefer to work alone but the other two seem OK. Why are we taking on this psycho? And where is she even from? Her background looks like mine. You know I don't like surprises."

Graham had been aligning some of his surviving agents in teams - some entirely from within his own agency, some with other agencies. He had assembled four of the top female agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF and herself from the CIA. He needed them to disrupt drug and arms traffic (good enough for the DEA and ATF to get involved) that helped to finance terrorism and other criminal activities (which caught the interest of the FBI).

He had given her the identity of Christine Duncan for the duration of her involvement with the four woman team – Chris for short. But she was actually somewhat pleased with her team and wished she didn't have to hide her true identity from them. Or could at least tell them she was lying to them and why. Zondra Rizzo and Amy Monroe went by their real names; something she hadn't done for two thirds of her life.

Zondra's extended family had some oblique connection to the New York mafia which had made her early years in the FBI difficult. She had developed a very coarse personality until you got to know her - and then she was only somewhat coarse - but no one at the FBI gave her any shit anymore. Amy was a bit of a contradiction - a bubbly, ditzy cheerleader type who was completely focused on missions. Chris was relieved to see the difference as she was also their explosives expert. She put the 'E' in 'ATF' - Amy was an artist with plastic explosives. She may have also been a bit of a pyromaniac.

Graham had sent her to pick up their fourth member from the airport and tasked her with getting her up to speed, seeing if she had something to contribute and keep a leash on her if the assessment was accurate. She had been working with his best operative when she suffered her injuries so he had called in some markers, made some demands about additional training and made a deal for her later services provided she proved herself for her own agency.

"Her agency gave her that diagnosis. I think she's got something left in the tank and they let me borrow her. Consider her an agent of chaos now. I arranged some training in styles you're familiar with. She's a pretty good fighter now. Pretty good with a knife in close quarters too. I want you to make her even better. They call her uncontrollable. I want you to control her. Even if it's just to wind her up and turn her loose; pull the pin and toss her. Let her take out her issues on whatever we need torn apart. She'll be operating under the alias Cameron, Kelly."

Chris sealed the file in a burn bag, already chemically destroying its contents. "Fine. The plane's unloading now. I'll see what we're working with and keep you posted."

Kelly Cameron made a beeline for her even before Chris raised the small placard bearing her fake name. She hadn't initially recognized the statuesque agent. She had seen her a few times since Pakistan but there had always been some number of bandages obscuring the magic that the agencies had worked. The difference in the woman's appearance wasn't drastic but it was still jarring. A smile overtook Kelly's face when she first saw Chris and she called out "Hey CIA."

When Chris looked directly into her icy blue eyes and knew her. Chris had last seen her in DC and in Atlanta prior to that in between surgeries and, before that, lying in a hospital bed under the name of Dani Lassiter and she returned her smile. "Hey yourself, D."

This was the fourth time the two of them had ''met' and she tried not to dwell on the fact that both she and her oldest friend of only a year and a half automatically knew that each changed names so often that it would just be easier to call each other by the names - or variations of the names of their respective agencies - until each had the opportunity to share their new identity with the other. Or dwell on the fact that she changed names so often that her enduring identity was simply 'CIA'; she often wondered if that was her 'true identity' now.

She focused on the fact that her friend was up and around, apparently fit enough for duty. The story had been shared when she had sought her out in a convalescent center in Atlanta when her friend's face and body was still decorated with too many bandages to count. The DEA had offered her services to other agencies in exchange for the pooled surgical resources of the CIA, FBI and WitSec. She had once shown her friend what they could do to hide a relatively minor injury. You could still _feel_ the scar but not see it. They had done the same thing to her injuries a few times since. What they had accomplished for 'Kelly' was nothing short of amazing.

Over the next few weeks as members of a newly formed team, Chris had put on a brave front and offered generic greetings and platitudes instead of giving in to lachrymose thoughts of her friend lying lifeless on a medivac gurney and what it must have taken to bring her back to her current state. Whatever it was she hadn't come back quite the same and all she could think was _All the King's horses and all the King's men..._

The individual physical changes were not extreme but the overall effect made her look drastically different. Her features were slightly sharper as a result of the reconstructive surgery. Her long, nearly red, auburn hair was back though she suspected there were still some tracks to fill in what had been ripped out. If so, she couldn't tell. She was beautiful before but now she was stunning.

But the cost quickly became obvious to her. Where 'Kelly' was once warm and outgoing, she was now cold and detached unless she was putting on an act to work a mark. She could be cruel and vindictive. She was no longer timid in the least around men outside of missions. The surgeons had done an amazing job but she would never be whole again. Chris often thought back to that conversation when she had acted as her friend's de facto confessor.

_Ever look in the mirror and wonder who's looking back at you?_

.

* * *

.

The first two missions were relatively clean. The third was a small time arms deal outside a rundown abandoned farm. The setup was easy. They knew the sellers but not the buyers and it was Kelly's clever idea to set off a gunfight between the two with nothing but two laser sights.

Twelve men total - five sellers, seven buyers - and when the false threat of snipers on both sides broke down into a running gun battle her new teammate was more than holding her own. Slipping from cover to cover keeping the men contained even as they panicked. Graham was right to call her an agent of chaos.

She may have been having a little too much fun but showed no sign of the dreaded reckless behavior until three of the buyers broke cover together to run. When Kelly saw one of the three her face turned to stone and she sprinted blindly across the full field of fire into the surrounding woods - ignoring the fact that she had overtaken the other two before gripping her prey by the hair and leaping onto his back as he stumbled. She planted both knees between his shoulder blades as he fell, pouncing on him like some kind of rabid monkey, and she drove his face into the ground.

She rolled off him and drew two pistols from the small of her back and dropped the other two men with three shots each. Chris had caught up to her by then as she cuffed her unconscious quarry while Zondra and Amy cleaned up the remaining survivors.

Kelly looked to her with a maniacal smile and offered a cryptic explanation.

"Found one."

.

* * *

.

Chris just stood in front of the door of the barn with her arms crossed. Zondra and Amy were busy reminding her that they needed information so Chris turned her head and yelled through the door. "Getting what we need, D?"

"Yeah, I got it! Now let me work!"

Chris made her stick her head out and share what she had learned and it mostly matched what two others had told Zondra. Chris didn't tell the other two why she was letting Kelly conduct the interrogation; who the man was or that Kelly had identified him during the fight. Kelly had ducked back inside the barn where the man was bound to the center support post. They couldn't hear her whisper in the whimpering man's ear "Now let's talk about what _I_ want to know." but they heard him scream moments later.

Chris offered to her other two teammates "Maybe you two should get our other two new friends ready for transport."

"What about this guy?" asked Amy.

Zondra had watched the exchange between Chris and Kelly a little more closely and grabbed Amy by the arm to go do as instructed. "I don't think he'll be joining us Ames."

Kelly stepped out of the door almost thirty minutes later wiping her hands on a rag even though blood extended up to one of her elbows. There was even blood around her mouth prompting Chris to look back at their captive. Had she _BITEN_ his ear off?

"There's one in Antwerp and two in Caracas."

"I've got a thing in Slovenia. Not exactly around the corner."

"Cross a little thing like the Alps. Most of Germany. _Then_ it's right around the corner."

"Fine." and Chris heard a weak groan from inside. "You done yet?"

"Not by a mile. Figured I'd just leave the doors open. Let the dogs have him." referring to the packs of wild dogs that plagued the area.

Chris stepped to the door and raised her sidearm, checking with Kelly. The man must have looked up as he started to plead "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sor-"

Kelly had nodded and Chris had fired. Kelly saying after the shot, "Just don't let the next one off with _just_ a bullet in the head like those first four." before she walked a few feet from the door.

Zondra and Amy had returned and ran the last few feet when they saw what was happening. Zondra asked "What happened?" with Kelly offering "Too little, too late." as Amy peeked inside.

"Well, what's the diagnosis, Ames?"

"Oh, he's definitely dead."

Kelly was now standing behind Chris where the other two couldn't hear her - head lowered and icy, heartless blue eyes staring back at the barn through her lashes when she spoke. "They're all dead. They just don't know it yet."

Kelly walked away and Chris offered up a way for one of them to be involved in their freshly concocted revenge plot. "Whatdya say Ames? Wanna burn it down?"

Zondra's watched as glee overtook the face of the smallest of the four of them and she started scrounging for supplies and wondered if it meant anything at all that she seemed to be the most sane person present.

"Don't worry about it Z..." Chris said as she passed her while she walked back to their truck "...if you ever need something taken care of we'll do the same for you."

Zondra watched the two spooks walk away as the glow of flames started to build behind her.

.

* * *

.

Antwerp, Belgium November 2003

.

"Yes sir, Belgium. I wrapped up that other little business meeting early and decided to check out the sights up here."

Chris wasn't exactly AWOL but she definitely wasn't sanctioned. She had dozens of days of leave stored up - probably half a year or more with all the psych leave she never took - but Graham didn't exactly seem inclined to make a bookkeeping exercise out of it as long as she was in place on time for her next mission.

She was sitting outside in the mid-afternoon watching the door of the pub across the cobblestone street. It was warmer than she had expected and enough people were around her - also simply tourists enjoying the last warmth of autumn along with their coffee and pastries or sandwiches - that she spoke cryptically to reiterate that she had completed her mission ahead of schedule. She had two days to take care of her other mission.

Just then the man she was here to find stepped out the front door of the pub across the street. He stumbled a bit as he determined which way to turn and began to walk away from her and Graham asked about the reliability of their agent of chaos.

"Yeah, I think I can help her. She has something that's keeping her going now. I'll be there on schedule but I have to go now, sir."

She disconnected abruptly and dropped an amount of local currency on the table that was just generous enough to not be memorable in any way and continued quietly to herself as she stood to follow.

"I have a message to deliver."

.

* * *

.

035: White, Red, Black, Pale

.

Kiev, Ukraine; December 2003, three hours before dawn

.

* * *

_"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"_

\- J. Robert Oppenheimer (via the _Bhagavad Gita_)

* * *

.

They had come to be known as the Clandestine Attack Team or CAT Squad. She had winced when Graham had told her the name, and Graham just smiled because he knew she would. She told him it was contrived to be deliberately misogynistic and was pathetically redundant. Like saying 'PIN number' or 'ATM machine' - how exactly were they supposed to be a 'Team Squad'?

He said he agreed but that was not necessarily a bad thing. It was just a nickname out of the analyst pool but, if word got out, he wanted even the idea of such a team to be dismissed and underestimated. Half the other teams had been disbanded and theirs was by far the most successful of the bunch. They usually got along pretty well but things had gotten a little tense tonight. Words had been said - somewhat in jest - that the speakers were oblivious to how hurtful they might be.

Chris Duncan was standing by the rail of the rooftop deck, looking over the snow covered city, polishing off a double scotch and lighting a Cuban cigar. She had gone through a phase of chain smoking cigarettes when not tactically unwise but quit as suddenly as she had started when a cover role had demanded it. Now when she had those cravings - and could acquire them - she indulged with a fine cigar which appeased the craving for a longer time and more effectively than cigarettes.

There was a smaller bar up here but fewer people present due to the cold. As she contemplated whether she had achieved the desired level of numbness or should have another drink as he friend and teammate joined her and set a fresh glass of whiskey on the wide wooden rail in front of her.

"Let it go D. They don't know what they're talking about. They don't know shit."

.

* * *

.

Kelly had walked away toward the bar when the offending comments had been made and Chris had stepped outside shortly thereafter. Zondra and Amy were unaffected and currently working the dance floor inside.

It was a point of professional pride that came up occasionally. Usually after a successful mission where each had demonstrated their skills and usually after huge quantities of alcohol. Amy had been the first to call them the Four Horsemen. But Zondra had been the first to bring up who was who - or which - cryptically (at least to Chris' ears) saying "Everyone wants to be Mr. Black. No one wants to be Mr. Pink."

Chris was not an active participant in their early debates. One of their first missions had seen Amy walking up to a guard-post and waiting for Chris to take her shot as she approached. And she waited as she walked. And waited some more.

The guard on her right was openly ogling her as she approached. He had opened his mouth to speak and, when the angles were finally right, Amy felt the whisper of wind by her right ear. As he flew backward into the wooden shack behind him she realized it had been the arrow that now impaled him through the chest and pinned him to the wall. The other guard on her left realized it too and reached for his weapon as Amy felt another whisper on her bare left shoulder and the arrow continued through the second guard's eye.

Chris slipped by her, covered in black from head to toe like some kind of modern day ninja with her bow slung across her back, and dropped Amy's gear by her feet. She broke down and stored her bow, drew two wicked looking knives and stood guard in the shadows next to the guard pinned up like a grotesque Halloween decoration while Amy geared up behind the shack. Together they mostly non-lethally cleared the servants and remaining security personnel from their side of the building, Amy trailing and mostly just watching the path if destruction Chris silently created.

Zondra - the only other member of the team who could even draw that bow much less with Chris' accuracy - had soon witnessed their CIA member in action while clearing a warehouse. Zondra later described her as a whirlwind of vicious kicks shifting between and over stacks of empty pallets with a pistol in one hand for targets just out of reach and knife in the other.

There were plenty of other examples explaining why the question of which of them was Death was no longer mentioned or discussed. At first it seemed that Kelly might make a run for the title but she seemed to make more of a game of it and was not quite as ruthlessly violent, generally reliable with a few unexpected exceptions. Chris, on the other hand, was so coldly calculating and unhesitating in her actions that, even though she never boasted and never lobbied for it, the role of Mr. Black had been silently conceded by all.

Tonight, for some reason, the conversation had been revived and turned to which of them was War. Kelly had been a little more withdrawn lately and Zondra thought she could use the team's brand of gallows humor to draw her out. Amy followed suit and no one was going to simply concede second place as they had first. It wasn't intentional and they had no way of knowing that words had been spoken that hit too close to home for Kelly.

Despite any better intentions it was impossible to tell if it was good natured ribbing or just one of Zondra's particularly bitchy moods when she chose attack campaign tactics rather than making her own case to the title of War by saying "Clearly, with your bony ass, you're Famine."

Unlike Chris, the others didn't know that Kelly had once been a little more curvy but now had a lot of trouble maintaining her weight. Losing a few feet of intestine could do that to you.

Amy, never the first to strike, was emboldened by Zondra's comments. As usual, she stepped way over the line. "Her hooha is a weapon of mass destruction so I think she's Pestilence. Might have to just cut it all out to save the patient. Like frostbite." When Kelly stood up to leave she added her usual amendment "What? I'm just playing!"

"Fuck her if she can't take a joke." Zondra said to Kelly's back. "C'mon, let's dance."

"I think I'll go out for a smoke first." Chris was angry on Kelly's behalf even though Kelly clearly had no intention of sharing why she had been hurt. Chris figured she would wait outside in case Kelly might need someone to not talk to for a few minutes.

"Those things are gross." Amy said in reference to the cigar as she stood and looked to the dance floor.

"It wouldn't be the nastiest thing you've had in your mouth." Zondra snorted at that but Amy had already locked eyes with a tall guy who Chris had seen eyeballing her for the past fifteen minutes. Oblivious as ever, Amy dragged Zondra behind her.

.

* * *

.

Chris took the drink Kelly had placed in front of her and enjoyed a small gulp before trying to engage her in conversation. "Z's just being a bitch. And Amy needs to learn that ending every crass statement with 'I'm just playing' doesn't let her off the hook for what comes out of her mouth. But it's kinda funny they picked their own horses to throw at you."

"What the fuck horses you talking about?" Kelly slurred slightly. She wasn't quite plastered but she was on her way. Chris realized she hadn't explained that very well but Kelly's question was worded just as poorly. Kelly had slammed her first order of two drinks at the bar before coming out to find her with two more. Alcohol was finally taking its glorious toll on both of them and Chris tried to explain just as poorly.

"White, Red, Black and Pale"

Kelly looked back blankly for a few seconds before asking for clarification "What the fuck, C?"

"I do it by color. White. Red. Black. Pale. That's their order. The Horsemen. Pestilence comes first on a white horse. Then War on a red one and Famine on a black one. Death is last on a pale horse leading Hades. So its simple. The red head..." and Chris gestured to Kelly "...is War, the brunette is Famine and of the two blondes, Amy tans better than me so she's Pestilence. Just by elimination because I'm more pale. Most call it Pestilence anyway - it might be the antichrist. Let Amy suck on that."

"You know too much stuff."

"Oh, don't I know it." Chris laughed. Kelly often commented on the amount of arcane and obscure knowledge packed into her friend's brain.

"I notice your logic works out to make you Mr. Black."

"What the fuck does that even mean?" Chris sighed. Kelly also often commented that none of it was pop-culture knowledge but refrained from doing so this time and responded simply.

"The coolest one."

"Oh, well, razzle dazzle. It's what I do. You know, when I'm not the Reaper's Mistress."

"What's that?"

"Old codename."

"See? You're cool AND the gang. Definitely Mr. Black." she considered the logic for a moment and finally seemed to relax a little "...just as well. Plagues and famines come and go...unless the next one truly is the last one. But War and Death? We are eternal."

They sat watching the cityscape for a short while and the moon grow dimmer or the sky grow lighter as dawn approached before Kelly softly spoke again. "My mom's dead."

Chris turned to lean on the rail and face her as she continued "Of course, Death should know that. Cancer. That hospital I was in, she was there too. For treatment. Graham thought it was some sort of kind gesture I suppose. It just made me scared as shit that she would come see me. Tell me I deserved it or something. I don't know where she finally died. There or at home. I didn't go to see her. Not when it got really bad and not when I was two floors away."

The CIA Agent knew better than to say she was sorry even though something about this news was still bothering her. She hadn't shared any new information about her true self since that first time. They each lived in the here and now. But Chris knew that the woman had beaten at least one of her daughters regularly for most of her life, not so secretly blaming them for their father leaving.

"She wouldn't have recognized me anyway. I used to look like her. I'm kinda glad I don't anymore. But..."

"But what?"

"But now...it's just...its like I never existed. I'm just a shadow now. I wish I was more like you. I don't want to feel this, any of this. I want my life back but all I have now... How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Never actually _be_ anyone. Never let it bother you."

"I'm plenty of people; someone new all the time. If you stand still too long the past catches you. I knew that long before I became an agent. Keep moving. Don't think. Just...keep breathing. Stay alive."

"Why?"

"So I can meet crazy bitches like you, of course. Keeps things interesting." She had responded quickly but that was really the issue, wasn't it? It had been beaten into her at every turn. Stay alive. It took someone she was trying to get to adopt the same mantra to point out the folly of it.

But Kelly saw through it. Stay alive to report. Stay alive to complete your mission. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then what?

But she was also right. It had been easier to turn it all off. It wasn't just survival instinct that embraced her training it was fear that made her cling to it. Fear that the hole was already too deep to escape and getting deeper every day. And she wished she knew a better answer than her friend's desire to embrace her approach. To shut down. To keep your emotions in check. To do what had to be done because you could do it. Keep digging.

But it was better this way. And if that was what she wanted, she could teach her how.

Kelly was the first to speak next.

"Its cold as fuck up here." It wasn't before but it sure as hell was now.

"Hadn't noticed." Chris lied.

"Fine, you fucking ice monster but I'm gonna go get warmed up. Maybe _really_ warmed up. Wanna go get fucked?"

"Drunk-fucked or fucked-fucked?" Chris teased.

"Either. Both. Maybe. I don't know yet. And I don't really care. I just... My bony ass wants to forget everything for a few hours. Those guys..." and she gestured to the two large men who had just abandoned the upstairs bar and gone back downstairs "...are still watching you. Probably has something to do with how you're molesting that cigar."

"Which is why I smoke 'em. Weeds out the creeps. If they make a dick comment they're disqualified. And who says they weren't checking you out. Your bony ass looks fantastic. You can have 'em. Take your pick. Or both. Whatever."

"I do have some boundaries, you know?" Chairs smiled at Kelly's indignance even as she smiled at the compliment.

"I know." She was far from irresponsible about such choices either, having had such control taken from her before. It was one of the ways Chris knew she wasn't completely self-destructive. "I also know you like the beefier guys. They're all yours. Take your pick. The blonde was nicer when I told him to fuck off."

"Well, I'll start with the dark haired one then. You know how I feel about the nice ones."

"Collateral damage control? Didn't think War worried about that kind of thing."

"Some people haven't been ruined by the world yet. I don't wanna be that person. That's not my job. Unless they have it coming."

"We all have it coming. You know that. But maybe there's hope for you yet."

"I just don't get anything out of kicking the puppies. If you think it's anything more than that, you need your head checked. Or we both need more to drink."

Chris considered telling her friend that she was a good person. That she _didn't_ deserve what had happened. That she deserved better than this but she was barely hanging on and would have just scoffed at that. And it would be hypocritical. If she wanted to emulate her coping mechanisms why should she stop her. It was working for her. Living for the next mission. Pretending to be human while she accepted the fact that she wasn't anymore. "Right...but I'm set for now." and she raised her half-empty glass to demonstrate.

"Why whiskey? Thought you were all vodka, all the time."

"Last cover was a whiskey drinker. Little details like that always seem to stick."

"Weird. But I get it, I guess. I'd kill for a couple lines."

"No, you promised. You keep yours and I'll keep mine. No escape from War and Death." If Chris Duncan hadn't forced herself to ignore such things she would recognize the guilt she still felt for indirectly leading Kelly to this point. Maybe things would have been different for her friend if she had just become Death sooner.

"Fine, no coke." and she offered an exaggerated pout. "But I'm definitely getting drunk-fucked. We'll see about the other thing. I'll tell blondie you're reconsidering."

"Don't you fucking dare." she said to her friend's back as she walked away. She responded by raising both arms - drink in one hand - and swaying her hips provocatively in time to the thumping bass that wasn't exactly audible but could be felt through the floor. Shades of the woman she had met almost two years ago.

Chris smiled after her. She was undeniably crazy. But she was almost always fun. The sweet girl who wanted out - wanted a family - who instead became War. Who became a predator. Who found a few battles left to fight. Who _lived_ for the fight. Something to cling to that kept her alive.

And she, who only wanted adventures - to see the world and to learn new things and to live new experiences - not knowing it would all combine to make her into this. She smiled at the thought of herself as the ultimate predator. The one who first and still tutored War on the ways of violence. When you are hunting down the men who stole your dreams there's no better friend to have than Death itself.

Maybe Kelly had the right idea. At least for tonight. Chris had no long term plan - no end game or happily ever after - but for now she would hang out with her friends, have a good time and see what other varieties of distraction presented themselves.

Pretend to _be_ alive for at least a night before she turned it all off again in order to _stay_ alive.

Then she could try to find another reason for doing so. That was tomorrow's problem.

She drained the glass and set it on the bar before she opened the door to step back inside and the wall of music assaulted her senses.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: I know people had guessed that Amber (Ch 3) or Tiffany (Ch 26) would turn out to be Carina. (But then I still haven't actually used the name Carina, have I? Mwahahaha!) I didn't set out to create red herrings but it seems I did. Some things are interconnected and sometimes people drift into and back out of our lives but you have now met multiple versions of the woman who will become Carina. Keep in mind this is almost four years before canon.

So, by my count, two of the CATs are deep cover - and don't use their real names (even with their teammates) and two are simply undercover (and use their real names relatively freely outside of missions). There's a whole Charlie's Angels conversion chart that starts by giving Amy a last name. Hers is never provided so I used Mircea Monroe's last name. Of course, Cheryl Ladd's character was Kris Monroe so Sarah is a Chris but not a Monroe and it all got weird from there...

Also, there _IS_ an 'E' in 'ATF'... ATF is the non-updated acronym for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms _and Explosives_. The 'E' is silent. And invisible.

Super Nerdy Star Wars trivia:

So, as you all know, the Kessel Run is an 18 parsec (almost 59 light year) route around an unstable cluster of black holes called The Maw. The 18 parsec route is the safe distance from The Maw. The faster your vessel, and better the pilot / navigator, the closer you can venture to these black holes and shave distance off the route.

Oh, you didn't know that? (Except for you in the back with your hand up - I see you - chill, dude.) Neither did I. That's because this is the revisionist history retcon of how Han Solo basically saying what SEEMS like "I ran the 100 yard dash in less than 65 yards" is expressed as a boast about speed and skill rather than defying a measure of distance.

This may or may not be cleverness on Lucas' part. The Han Solo Trilogy (and other Star Wars extended universe writings) may have contrived this to obscure the fact that Lucas flat-out messed up by choosing that word. Lucas himself may have realized it but didn't want to part with the line. By the time of the final shooting script it included the explanation that this was part of Han Solo's "how gullible are these people?" sales pitch before negotiating price and Obi-Wan was on to him.

Star Wars is more space-fantasy than SciFi so I generally give Lucas a pass on pseudo-scientific jargon and explanations. Lucas also mixes contemporary slang with original words - which does kinda bug me - and comes back to the point of why anyone a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away is using a unit of measure that we use today, so... Whatever.

Just because you enjoy a thing - even consider yourself a super fan - doesn't mean it's creator(s) are infallible. I won't criticize George (more than this little aside has) or defend him because I'm sure I'll botch more than one something in this or any future writing. You will find I also try hard not to criticize the Schwedak despite the portions most of us loathe - they gave us a helluva universe.

But that's the abbreviated story of the Kessel Run. And to me it seems like just the type of thing that would inexplicably and irrationally set Morgan against Sarah.

(I would not consider myself a 'super fan' - or else I would have realized sooner that I have been misspelling 'Wookiee' for about 35 years. I don't own any costumes or lightsabers and I didn't know any of this - other than parsec being a measure of distance - until I researched 'stuff Chuck might know'.)


	14. XIV: Carina

...the ashes from which rose the woman we know as Carina and the corresponding events that led Sarah to feel somewhat responsible for her; Carina considers the suitability of Sarah's new teammate...

Canon Reference: Most of the events of Ep 104 ('Wookiee' - that's two 'E's folks!)

Contents: Three chapters; the first (4K words) and third (2K) are flashbacks built upon hints from the last installment, the second is the longest (11K words), covers canon events and is divided into 'mini-chapters' with obvious 'mileposts' of a sort that should help facilitate reading over more than one session.

A/N: For most of the canonical events of 'Wookiee' (Ch 37, the second chapter of this installment), Carina gets a single chapter almost entirely to herself. This chapter could probably stand alone but the other two could not so this is another super-sized installment (also to keep this arc contained to three installments - that's right, MORE Carina!)

I said I would fill in some blanks and I took great pains to keep these events less explicit than they could be but it's still pretty dark. In case you fine people haven't realized that you are my guinea pigs (mwahaha!) there is a deliberate shift in style for portions of this installment. The first chapter is told in very quick cuts and the timing jumps back and forth in a very non-linear approach. The jumping around may make you a bit nauseous but I am relatively confident that it is less nausea inducing than a detailed, linear accounting of events. The third is sort of the final fragment of the first but longer than the other fragments in order to tie up some loose threads.

Despite all precautions, those chapters (36 &amp; 38) are among the darkest parts of the overall story. I promise we'll lighten up somewhat relatively soon and rarely again fall so far into the muck but let's just get to it, shall we?

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Real Genius_, or to any songs by Hole is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XIV: Carina

* * *

.

036: Before and After

.

* * *

_In any moment of decision,_

_the best thing you can do is the right thing,_

_the next best thing is the wrong thing,_

_and the worst thing you can do_

_is nothing._

\- Theodore Roosevelt

* * *

.

Afghanistan / Pakistan Border Region May 2002;

Mission failure suspected, SAD team deploying, missing 12 Hours

.

Twelve hours and counting. That was how long her DEA colleague had been missing.

They thought their intel was solid. The three groups representing rival Bolivian drug families had a disagreement three days ago. Only two would be at the meet. Their contacts had fled to Pakistan a year ago - members of an al-Qaeda splinter group working around local Taliban and emerging warlords to finance their terror network via heroin production. The Taliban had been largely purged and al-Qaeda had moved to inside Pakistan but had gained significant control over opium production in the region and still maintained that control.

A small contingent of al-Qaeda representatives and fighters were to conduct the meeting. This was the connection the DEA was anxious to dismantle. The Bolivians had distribution capabilities but little control over coca production in their own country and the supplemental opium supply was their means to gain a competitive advantage over the larger families at home. It seemed like a win-win.

No one knew about the mercs.

Rachel's SAD team had been held up waiting for approvals from the regional operations lead. There was another tactical team here and at a bare minimum they needed his equipment and pilots to get into the region of the meet. Ideally they would have clearance to do so. But they had to admit they had no idea where to start looking and could only hope the original meet site offered some clues.

Dani had been worried about missing the meet and losing her chance to bring her larger mission to a successful conclusion. Rachel told her to wait but Dani had found an unassigned DEA FAST team and somehow convinced them to venture into Pakistan and take down both groups at the meeting early this morning.

The DEA chain of command had swiftly approved an operation that would execute the final takedown and claim all the credit for tracing this path back to the terrorist group. Rachel's team had no choice but to stay behind.

The DEA team had neither returned nor provided a situation report.

.

* * *

.

Field Hospital, Afghanistan;

Two days after retrieval

.

Rachel had been evaced to the same field hospital. The buildings were rudimentary and recovery areas were limited. Her own injuries were minor. They didn't want to damage the merchandise. It had taken several minutes to determine that she was relatively unhurt after they had cleaned off all the blood.

They still insisted on wheelchairs even over the rocky ground until she was fully discharged. It took a few minutes to find the right place. When she did get there Connors was standing frozen at the door - looking through the window with his hand wrapped around the handle.

Rachel had introduced them after all and was struck by how shy Dani had been about it. She was an entirely different person when she was out of character. He was wary of her undercover work at first but Dani had assured him she was nearly done with all of that.

Rachel didn't volunteer any information when he asked about such things and he anxiously awaited her return. When Rachel joined her on her intelligence gathering missions they started working on less dangerous approaches. Dani eventually grew wary of putting herself in situations that might be considered cheating on him in any way and they both wondered if either adjustment had made their investigation any less effective.

Rachel remembered coming upon them in the maze of hangars in Ecuador before they were sent here. Just standing and talking quietly with his hands on her waist and her arms around his neck.

Before she could leave the two of them together, Rachel watched as he let go of the door handle and walked away.

The fucking coward.

.

* * *

.

Afghanistan / Pakistan Border Region May 2002;

Mission failure confirmed, SAD team awaiting orders,

13 hours before retrieval, missing 46 Hours

.

A second DEA team had been located yesterday and sent on a reconnaissance mission overnight. That team had reported back that all were dead. The Bolivians, the small contingent of locals believed to be al-Qaeda and the entire DEA team. No female agent was reported as present and with her covert status was not officially recorded. With no official record of her presence or involvement, the DEA cut her loose.

There was no expedient way to find their missing DEA partner of the last three months. Which was why Rachel was walking through the bazaars of Angoor Ada - a market town on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan - in the worst possible disguise of a deliberately poorly worn burqa. A deliberately botched greeting here, a cultural misstep there, if these assholes didn't catch on soon she might be tempted to deliberately make the ultimate in stupid mistakes and allow a flash of blonde hair.

Her hope was that she would be scooped up by the same people who were holding her friend rather than stoned to death on the spot. Her team had said it was suicide but she managed to arrange her own transport anyway. No matter how foolhardy using herself as both bait and tracker was, she knew her boys would have her back even though only one had risked coming with her while the others continued their increasingly frantic attempts to acquire the necessary resources for a proper operation.

Otherwise it wouldn't have been a relief when someone finally threw a bag over her head, wrestled her into some sort of enclosed vehicle and reached inside the bag to hold something over her mouth until she passed out.

.

* * *

.

Pakistan border region, near Angoor Ada, temporary structure;

9 hours before retrieval, 4 hours after bait taken, detained 50 hours

.

Dani was trussed up and immobilized. Rachel was in a similar state except she was clothed.

Rachel could see two bullet wounds, multiple lacerations and severe bruising. she was hurt badly and only a cursory attempt at cleaning and dressing her wounds had been made.

When they were left alone Dani whispered bits and pieces of what had happened. It wasn't a deal, it was a payoff. The retreat to Pakistan was complete and there was no intention of maintaining control of the poppy fields. The Bolivians had brought ten million in cash each and the mercs who had been maintaining control had sent in a few locals as sacrificial lambs by threatening their families. When the FAST team moved in on what appeared to be the meet, the untrained men got off a few shots, the Bolivian gun men lying in wait exposed their positions and Dani's team made short work of the two groups with minor casualties.

But as they were securing the few surviving combatants, Dani's team was picked apart by twenty mercenaries surrounding their position. She had been hit with two gunshots and a concussion grenade and was easily subdued. The money was their final payment for services rendered. They were leaving the country with a million dollar bonus each. They had expected a million and a half. In a half baked scheme to make up some of the difference, they took her too. The remaining members of her team were executed.

All twenty men had been here at one time or another along with a local teenage boy who served as a runner. Dani had been both touched by Rachel's selflessness and horrified by the fact that they were now in the same position ending her story by saying "You shouldn't have come. Not for me."

Rachel resisted saying what she was repeating in her own mind for fear of giving anything away. It was a calculated risk, not a suicide mission. She knew she had backup, she knew her boys were coming any minute now.

But minutes quickly became hours. Some of the men had been and gone. Through snippets of conversations in English, French and Russian, they were clearly making preparations to leave for good. There had been only a few visits by the remaining men since Rachel had arrived with no thoughts of modesty. Rachel screamed at them to stop only to eventually be knocked unconscious again.

When she came to, still wondering why they had left her alone, she overheard fragments of a conversation in French, noting phrases like "top dollar...unspoiled...best bid..."

They finally did approach Rachel brandishing knives ominously only to strip her, cutting away the pants and tank she had worn under her since discarded burqa and finally cutting away her undergarments. They stretched her bonds to a nearly vertical position but, for now, limited themselves to taking four photographs of her, zapping her with an incredibly powerful cattle prod when she twisted and contorted out of attempts at modesty while she still managed to obscure her face with her hair.

They waited, making snide comments and gawking at her, Dani's most frequent visitor practically licking his chops, until the sat phone rang.

"Got it. Just the one. Pack up the yellow car, scrap the red." then the man disconnected and addressed the men. "Got a buyer for this one. Sorry, Jimmy." he directed at the tall man who had been waiting for approval to do what he wanted with Rachel. "But you can do whatever you want with the other one."

A weaselly man in the corner perked up at that and placed a rag over Dani's nose and mouth until her eyes rolled back and she lost consciousness. They moved her to a nearby table and pulled a curtain of plastic sheeting to form a wall. A woozy Rachel faced the awful truth that, for whatever unforeseen reason, no one was coming to save them.

Outside, on a hill nearby, a man radioed back to base.

"Well, fucking _get_ clearance and get your asses out here." The man half-growled, half-whispered into the radio. "There's fourteen here but some of them are packing up. No, it's not our assets, looks like a supply run or something. Even if half of them go, I can't take them without support. There could be anything going on in there. I _KNOW_ I'm off the reservation, you should be too, get the hell out here right fucking now. Call me back when you grow a pair...sir. Ramirez out."

.

* * *

.

Field Hospital, Afghanistan;

Two days after retrieval

.

Rachel approached the bed carefully, rising from her wheelchair to get closer. Dani's face was completely covered in bandages with a plastic insert protruding for breathing around the bandaging around her mouth with wired-shut jaw and only her eyes exposed. She was propped up by her hips lying on her left side because her right arm was in a cast. Rachel didn't dare to pull back the covers because she knew what she would find there.

They would be moving her soon but no one had told her of the full extent of her injuries. Hemorrhaging and a lack of expertise. This was a field hospital after all and they had done everything necessary to achieve their primary objective and keep their patient alive. They said it wouldn't help her healing process to know all the details, that they wanted to get her somewhere that could offer appropriate psychological care.

Rachel had already been given a clean bill of health and had orders to report to Romania by the end of the week. It had been clear when her team had visited her the first day - some of them gripping her by the hand, a few apologizing - Ramirez kissing her on her forehead and weeping as he apologized for not charging in sooner and certainly getting himself killed - that they thought they had let her down. Rachel had even taken care of any possibility of someone reprimanding them for an unauthorized action. It had been a crazy plan but they should have been there for her sooner. There for Dani sooner.

They didn't know what had happened during their captivity and she wouldn't tell. She remembered the deliberate flicking of blood on the plastic sheeting for her to see. The clearly psychotic weaselly man taking great pains to psychologically torment Rachel even as much as he did to keep Dani alive as his plaything.

They thought she had been brutalized - and that was certainly a possibility - but she didn't share because it really didn't matter that she and Dani hadn't been tortured equally. That was her guilt to bear. She wouldn't risk telling them that Dani took it all - physically, at least; Rachel's torture had been being forced to watch - and risk seeing any of them somehow relieved by that. And she couldn't go back into combat with these guys with them looking at her like they had something to make up to her. She knew her time here was over.

Rachel knew her friend would want to know and refused to wait and wonder if anyone _ever_ told her; especially if her own reserve of luck had run out and they never met again. She was surprised to see her friend's eyes were open as Rachel approached the other side of the bed. She pulled a chair over and sat face to face with her.

"Hey DEA." she started. "They're moving you out soon. You know that right?"

Dani blinked hard twice. OK, so two for 'yes'. She had been told not to attempt speaking around her dressings until the physicians at her next facility could make better arrangements.

"You're hurt bad sweetie" even through the bandages Rachel could make out the move of her mouth into a sardonic smile and the accompanying crinkle of her eyes.

_No shit._

"You're off to Germany. Officially to a military hospital but then you're going to disappear for a while. I talked to the Deputy Director and he agreed to pull some strings - get you into the off the books clinics. Same one that patched me up, I think."

Rachel didn't share Graham's expectations of her in exchange for this favor - her overdue conversion to his preferred espionage role full-time - but it didn't matter as Dani's hand tightened around her own and the message in her eyes was clear.

_Thank you._

Rachel went through things that had already been said, single and double blinks of icy blue eyes her only acknowledgement. No response at all when she told her that she didn't think Connors was coming. When she branched into forbidden territory, she watched what little she could see of her friend's face fall and tears form as suspicions became reality. The beeping of the monitors accelerated as Rachel told her friend the whole truth because she didn't think anyone else would, until she finally uttered the words that Rachel knew would destroy her.

"There's something you have to know and I'm afraid they'll wait forever to tell you."

She did not have the opportunity to talk to Dani again before she was transported to Germany. Dani had begun sobbing uncontrollably as doctors rushed in to sedate her and Rachel was forcibly removed from the room.

.

* * *

.

Pakistan border region, near Angoor Ada, temporary structure;

Retrieval imminent, 13 hours after bait taken, detained 59 hours

.

Ramirez had moved into position hours ago, remaining undetected outside the back wall of the structure. He was traumatized beyond anything he had ever experienced listening to the screams of at least one of the women he knew off and on for the past six hours. Whatever was going on in there, she couldn't possibly last much longer.

Both teams had finally arrived twenty minutes ago and had taken up positions nearby but were unable to move into attack position until they received clearance. Someone wanted to wait until a larger number of the force was present to maximize capture - or retrieve any advanced weaponry or WMDs they might have in their possession - or any intel about such things - the story seemed to change with every refusal. Whoever was in charge was having none of their objections that they had people inside in distress.

Ramirez waited and waited for the go signal. With comings and goings only six men remained inside. Still too many for one man. He would have to wait for his two support teams to move into position. Going alone had a success rate of less than zero. When he heard the most intense scream yet from inside, followed by what could more accurately be described as a roar from Rachel, he made the call.

"I'm moving in ten - I'll fuck you all in hell if you don't move too... in ten. Nine."

He saw them all move with speed toward their attack positions as he moved toward the main door of the structure. He really didn't care what had taken them so long but now that they were here he was glad to see they only paid cursory attention to their orders to stand down.

"Six. Five."

A bump at his shoulder and he stopped his verbal countdown continuing to click his mic for the remainder and both teams pitched cooked grenades through the doors in both front and back, bursting in after a symphony of bangs and flashes disoriented the occupants and taking them down in a matter of seconds.

They should have been here hours ago and Ramirez wondered if they were better late than never.

.

* * *

.

Pakistan border region, near Angoor Ada, regional command post;

Four hours earlier, 4 hours before retrieval,

9 hours after bait taken, detained 55 hours

.

The Area Coordinator for this sector of Pakistan surveyed his domain of rocks and sand as he drove back to his minimalist base camp. It was a shit assignment by any measure and only the many unsavory things he had done on behalf of the Director of the CIA had salvaged this poor excuse of what remained of his career. There were zero HUMINT resources embedded anywhere of consequence. The government was more against them than anyone cared to admit. There had been a few local informants but he had burned them for marginally successful missions in anticipation of either building a track record that improved his posting or building an informant network that had never materialized.

He had been here less than six months after his physical recuperation - he hadn't had a decent meal that entire time - and he hated every moment of it. Especially in contrast to the plum assignment he had lost prior to this one. The war effort was in full swing and he had been in Islamabad just yesterday briefing senior leaders on intelligence efforts throughout the region. His peers had provided much more substantial results, or at least actionable intelligence, and he had no found many sympathetic ears regarding a lack of resources or any other excuses. If he ever wanted out of here he was going to have to deliver something of substance soon.

He had been told there was a sketchy operation and had expected to see two additional squads of tactical operatives still milling about his post. He had received the information his junior officer had sent to the mobile command unit he had been visiting and he had asked them to clear the room when he reached the photograph.

His second in command had defied protocol and taken a photograph of the stunning blonde woman who had volunteered as bait when she refused to wait for confirmation and found her way to the bazaars on a local bus. He said any support teams might need to know what she looked like.

Major Rico had said to destroy it, that anyone but a complete idiot knew they were looking for the blonde one and all women in the region were wearing traditional garb anyway. The junior officer had not appreciated the colorful nickname that had been tacked on and further violated protocol for a covert operative and dutifully faxed the photo to his superior's attention.

In his brief response the Area Coordinator had curtly told his junior-grade assistant to wait for him to return for a full briefing before deploying. That he had received additional intel and the situation was more fluid than expected. The men involved were high value assets and they wanted to be sure to capture as many as possible. He wanted the other two teams ready to roll but the SAD team making the request was not to be allowed to go off on their own without approval.

When he arrived back at his own makeshift command post he asked for a sit rep.

"What's going on out there Jonesy? Where're our visitors?"

Agent Jones was in the process of destroying documents and photographs. "The two teams didn't want to wait any more. There was an... altercation. They took two of our choppers and pilots. The choppers are on the way back now. They dropped off a few clicks from the target and headed overland to get in position."

Major Rico had been working the phones trying to find someone to authorize the action he was currently taking without approval. Everyone in authority with any ability to help them was in transit, otherwise unavailable or insistent upon confirmation that this was a sanctioned operation - which it most definitely was not.

Agent Jones' superior dropped his copy of the photograph onto the pile that contained the original "And who's this?"

"One of the spooks. She let herself be taken to lead them to the other one. We've got two agents captured and a tracking team - well, it's just one guy who refused to wait. He stole a motorbike in case they dumped her tracker but they didn't find it until they had stopped moving. He's holding position waiting for his team."

The AC scrutinized the documents and considered for a moment what his options were. Clearly a retrieval of some kind would be required but the rumored force was still not gathered in one place. In fact, the spotter on site reported and the most recent satellite pictures confirmed, only six were currently present with two other heat signatures in stationary positions. This fit perfectly with his earlier hastily concocted excuses to keep the visiting teams from deploying.

"We wait until the others - the rest of the enemy personnel - return. I want to round up as many as possible."

"But sir, this is a retrieval mission"

"This _was_ a takedown. The DEA bitch fucked it all up. Both of them went off half-cocked and got themselves captured. We wait for the rest of the group before we do what we set out to do. Copy?"

It was all bullshit. But no one needed to ever know that. He had ordered the CIA team, technically now under his authority having no other valid orders, to stand down the moment he had seen the photograph. She shouldn't be here anyway. He thought he took care of her the night she attacked him. It was just a shame he'd have to let some band of local enforcers take care of her. The delay would have to be as good as cutting her loose completely. By the time the team that had followed her here reached her she would either be dead or as good as.

He let on none of this as he looked to Agent Jones pointedly for confirmation of his orders.

"Yes sir, Agent Peterson."

.

* * *

.

037: Besties

.

* * *

_It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them_

\- Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA;

Wed Oct 10, 2007, 10:45 pm

.

"I knew it was you. You always telegraph your punches."

It was a game that her friend from the DEA often played, all the more exciting because the red head was the only one aware that a game was being played. Just another way she had become more and more unpredictable over the past four years. Sarah had nearly killed her by accident or reflex twice. And the DEA agent was never a gracious loser.

"Bloody nose says otherwise." the red head gleefully smirked at the damage she had inflicted. Over the course of a year of recuperation, two years under her friend's tutelage when they were reunited and another two of trial by fire, the DEA agent was sure she had finally earned her position as one of the deadliest women on the planet. She might even be worthy of contending for her friend's undisputed title if she were so inclined.

"Your cover?" Sarah asked for a nom du jour and her friend responded in kind.

"Carina. You?"

"Sarah. Sarah Walker."

"So, Sarah Walker, what brings the CIA to Los Angeles?"

"Same thing that brings a DEA agent like yourself: a job."

"Well, whatever it is, it looks boring." She had located the hotel easily enough. Sarah had included an otherwise innocuous photograph in their email account that included the building nearly out of frame on the left side of the photo, as agreed. She hit the Porsche with a burst tracker and made the leisurely drive to a cute little apartment complex in Echo Park.

Her superiors had talked to Sarah's superiors - with Graham being his usual evasive self about the details - offering only a meet with enough information that Carina knew the agent in question was 'Sarah'. Carina could have requested a name and location directly from Graham but where was the fun in that. And neither approach would have led her to see what she had seen tonight.

Looking in to see 'Sarah Walker' participating in family game night had been somewhat unexpected. If she hadn't known better she would have thought it was for real. That her friend had left the business somehow and found what she thought the CIA agent sometimes wished she could have.

But this was the woman who taught her all about stifling impossible hopes and dreams. About armoring yourself in indifference and detachment.

"All right, _Carina_, what is it? If you're here, it means you need something."

"A diamond." Love, happiness, forgiveness - illusions all. But sticking it to a douchebag money-man for the opium cartels? That dream could come true. And the diamond was a means to an end with the added bonus of an honest-to-god jewel heist. Just the kind of thing the Sarah Walker _she_ knew would find an exhilarating distraction having recently lost a partner. What she hadn't expected was that _this_ Sarah Walker seemed to have moved on already.

"Wow, are you, uh... You looking to settle down?"

_Smart ass._ At least that hadn't changed. "No, I'm going to steal one. And you're going to help me." Sarah brushed away the offered hand as they both rose and Carina continued. "Scary Man is gonna brief you in the morning. I put a call in to play nice with the CIA and acted surprised when he said you were in the area."

"I wish you wouldn't call him that." Sarah bent and picked up the fish bowl and set it on the counter. "That was you watching tonight wasn't it?"

Carina smirked at her almost undetected surveillance. "I was worried you were slipping. I looked in on you. Ducked out of there before anyone saw me and followed you here." An apparently giddy, happy Sarah playing board games hadn't been the only surprise seen through that window but Carina wouldn't reveal that. "Nice to see you kept the Porsche. And that the hotel puts room numbers on the parking spaces. Idiots. They're gonna get rung up on a stalker case civil suit one day."

"I'll inform management. How did you get in here anyway?"

"Top-down. I'll go up for my rig later. The lock on the sliding door in that spare room is gonna need replacing by the way."

"You rappelled? What if someone saw you dangling off the side of a building?"

"Puh-lease. I don't dangle. Besides no one looks up anymore - not out here among the sheep. Basic tactics. You taught me that. Especially not in a self-absorbed town like this, or LA proper. Speaking of, what were you doing tonight? Look up some old hook up while you were in town?"

"I told you. It's a job."

"He didn't look like a job." She was fishing but Sarah wasn't biting so Carina moved to the other point of interest for the evening. She smirked at Sarah as she pictured what she had seen earlier - her friend sitting on the living room floor gazing up adoringly at the cute guy with the curly hair. "What's his name?"

"Let's just meet with Graham tomorrow before I tell you the secret sauce."

"Is that what he is? Your secret sauce?" Carina purred salaciously.

"Jesus, you're ridiculous."

"You know I'll find out." the tall, redhead taunted as she belly flopped in a most unladylike fashion across Sarah's bed and reached for the phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Ordering room service. Dangling works up an appetite."

Sarah busied herself with her fishbowl - refilling the bowl with bottled water, crouching to watch her goldfish swim about a bit, dropping a few flakes of food in case he had not eaten his fill before being dumped on the carpet - satisfying herself that Irving was unharmed. She only vaguely registered the feast that her friend - Carina - was ordering, commenting as she hung up the phone "They're going to think I'm having a party up here or something."

"Yeah, a slumber party. Mind if I crash here tonight? I haven't got a place yet."

"What if I wasn't alone?"

"Why? Does secret sauce sleep over?"

Sarah sighed "Are you going to ask me obnoxious questions all night?"

"Yep. Paint your nails and braid your hair too. He'll _love_ it. But I have to go up to the roof for my stuff first. Gonna let me back in?"

"I guess so."

As Carina passed Sarah on her way out the door, Carina pulled her friend into a firm but short lived hug. "Det är bra att se du."

"Dobrze cię widzieć." Sarah replied even as she began to imagine the many ways her life was about to become more complicated.

"Don't eat my fucking cheesecake."

"We'll see..." Sarah teased as she closed the door then rested her forehead against the back of it. Home from a trivia night to unlock the mysteries of Chuck and the one person who knew the most about her own secrets shows up. This was going to be a nightmare.

.

* * *

_Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness_

\- Euripedes

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA

Wed Oct 10, 2007, 10:45 am

.

Carina Miller looked down at the intel folder and then back up at her oldest friend. Maybe her only friend. She calls herself Sarah again - but for now she's Sarah the Wiener girl. She herself wouldn't be caught dead in it but it was a cute outfit on Sarah, very girl-next-door-slash-naughty-schoolgirl. On second thought, maybe she could find some use for an outfit like that. She figured Casey found it amusing, the analyst probably loved it and Sarah definitely hated it.

'Sarah' had put her off about him all last night and this morning before she got a room at a place near Sarah's. After sizing up Sarah's unfortunate cover job and accompanying wardrobe she decided to get to the bottom of something that had been bothering her since she bumped into Chuck earlier that morning.

He had sized her up appreciatively but not rudely and she did the same. He was cute. And he seemed normal. Shy. Dare she say - nice. Just the type she once worried about hurting and tried to avoid until experience taught her that almost no man deserved such courtesies. She soft-pedaled into it. "I can guess what Casey is doing here, but what about this Chuck guy?"

There was something just _off_ with this new analyst. Nothing about him screamed 'Agency' and if his regular Joe act was, in fact, an act it was the best she had ever seen. Sarah had described his best friend as a civilian telling her more than Sarah probably intended and piquing her curiosity.

More importantly, Sarah was never very good at hiding when she was interested in a guy and never as bad as this. To be fair, it wasn't all that obvious to even a trained observer but Carina had once made something of a hobby of studying Sarah's surprising ineptitude dealing with the opposite sex when it wasn't for the job. Sarah also seemed particularly protective of this one and Carina hadn't missed the way he had looked at Sarah this morning. "What's he analyzing anyway? You?"

"Our _cover_ is boyfriend - girlfriend." She didn't miss the emphasis on the word 'cover' but still wanted some answers so she decided to pick at an old scab to try to get Sarah off-balance.

"Speaking of, I'm sorry to hear about Bryce." And she was. A little. She had trusted Bryce to take care of her friend physically. He was a good spy and a good partner. He was a little more unpredictable than she would have preferred - which she fully realized was the pot calling the kettle black - but she had trusted him to look after her friend's physical well-being. Just not her heart. The one Carina knew still beat under all of her armor. In her own experience, the thickest armor hid the most fragile hearts. Some days the armor was all that held either of them together.

The implication that Bryce was Sarah's boyfriend was a gross mischaracterization, especially when Carina's standard 'getting caught up' questions for the last year usually included _"Still working with that Bryce guy?"_ followed shortly with _"Still boning him?"_.

But Sarah and Bryce had been partners for a long time - work partners for a couple of years and partners-with-benefits for nearly as long. But Carina knew that's all it was. He was more a recurring one-night stand than a boyfriend but their dependence upon each other in the field had muddled things. A relationship of convenience with someone that Sarah trusted in a way that most real couples would never be able to put to the test.

And they could have gone on like that indefinitely until one or both of them died; as he had. But they would never be more. They didn't challenge each other that way. It was a kindness that it had been Bryce. He was never going to change. Maybe Sarah could find something better one day. It was too comfortable and her friend deserved more.

"Thanks. It's…it's been hard." Carina couldn't quite read her friend's hesitation. Was it hard because she lost Bryce? Or because she had lost that comfortable limbo she had been stuck in? Whatever it was, it wasn't grief. Not entirely. Was it hard because she was facing the fear of connecting with new people - people who may not make things so easy on her? People who might demand that she be a real human being again. Or confusing because she met someone who she looked at like she looked at that analyst last night? Just who _was_ this new man in her life?

"Of course. Getting dead _is_ an occupational hazard." Carina had meant to simply close the door on the Bryce portion of the discussion but had unwittingly reopened one that she couldn't know led back to Chuck. Her words were a not so subtle reminder of what was at stake for any of them in this nasty business. It made Sarah acutely aware of her constant companion: anxiety over the fate of a man who had entrusted her with his safety.

She continued to pry but Sarah wasn't any more forthcoming. So Carina waited until the Wiener boy was headed back in from the tables outside and counted on his apparently pathological adherence to company rules and Sarah's need to preserve her cover to slow Sarah down. Carina darted out of the eatery with little warning to head across the parking lot and get some better answers from an easier mark.

When Carina entered the But More across the parking lot she was mildly irritated as that Martin guy from this morning intercepted her. But eventually she spotted her target - the tall man with the unruly hair behind the circular desk in the middle of the store. She offered him a little flirty wave and received a reluctant and awkward one in return. _Oh yeah... this is going to be easy._

By this time, Sarah had gathered her files, stashed them in her car and caught up with her. That protectiveness Carina had detected before was back in full force. "What do you think you're doing here?"

Carina played innocent. "I'm just getting to know your team. I'm gonna trust them with my life and my diamond. I just wanna be certain they're the best."

"Look, he's new to all this. Don't do that _thing_ you always do. He's a really nice guy."

"Oh, is he now? Well you know my position on - _nice_ \- guys. If he really is as - _nice_ \- as you say we shouldn't have a problem." The way she sneeringly spat out the word 'nice', dripping with disdain and cynicism, Carina may as well have used air quotes.

Sarah _did_ know her friend's position on nice guys. It had been something never far from her mind ever since Carina, in a previous incarnation, had cooked up that particular philosophy. It had been constantly rattling around her mind to some degree ever since she had met Chuck. She wasn't comfortable with any more discussion in that particular vein so Sarah tried to steer the conversation back into professional territory.

"Well this is my op and my rules and you're gonna do exactly what I say."

"We'll see about that."

Sarah may as well have added 'and _my guy_' to 'my op and my rules'. Not that she hadn't planned on it already but Sarah should have known better than to challenge her like that. She now considered it a moral imperative to size this guy up considering how protective Sarah already was of him.

Carina had already seen enough to think she might have a bigger, more important and infinitely more difficult mission than retrieving her diamond planned. She didn't really need much help with that anyway, just thought it might be a fun distraction for Sarah. But there _was_ something this guy could do for her _if_ he was up to the challenge. None of the few guys Sarah had ever been genuinely interested in before had been remotely up to the task - or able to pass Carina's relatively simple test - but Sarah had never been so fiercely protective of any of them either. And this was Sarah _trying_ to hide this man's importance to her.

When Chuck approached and asked if he could borrow Sarah for a moment, the expectant way they both looked at each other wasn't lost on Carina. Each hung on the other's every word and neither realized it of themselves or each other. Carina wandered off to a display and fiddled with a few random kitchen implements like an overly complicated mechanical corkscrew to hide the fact that she was observing the interaction between the two 'partners'.

She could tell from his body language that Chuck was proposing some sort of idea and saw the mischievous smile, the one that no good ever came of, form on Sarah's face as she launched a counter proposal that he clearly didn't agree with. When Sarah rejoined her and proposed a double date to secure her cover in exchange for their help on her mission she knew Sarah thought she was getting one over on her.

Sarah still thought she was that foolish girl who worried about men's feelings. Why should she? They never worried about hers. It simply wouldn't do to let her get away with it and not play along.

.

* * *

_True friends stab you in the front_

\- Oscar Wilde

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA

Wed Oct 10, 2007, 8:38 pm

.

Carina came prepared for a battle of wills. Since Sarah obviously set this up in an attempt to make her uncomfortable and had some degree of home-field advantage, she should have been more prepared for similar treatment from Carina. Chuck's sister and her boyfriend - who Carina was pleased to hear were successful surgical fellows and apparently extremely happy together - were on-shift at a local hospital and after a bit of 'couply' small talk, Martin came through with the soft ball she needed to get a rise out of Sarah when he recounted the first meeting between Chuck and Sarah.

Now she was intrigued. First of all, Sarah was no one's damsel in distress. But more importantly, it raised even more questions about how Chuck came to be teamed up with the woman Carina and only a handful of others knew to be the CIA's secret weapon.

Why did he operate so close to his civilian life? Was it a staged meeting they had coordinated to secure their covers for the benefit of the people around Chuck? Or was Sarah straight working him? The best way to indirectly answer that question was to see just how much Chuck had known about Sarah personally before that so-called first meeting Martin had described.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. A lot of people who meet up at work end up dating." The smile and the color fading from Sarah's face told her just how new to this game Chuck was. Or at least how new to Sarah's life he was and how little he knew about her. Sarah must have assumed that Chuck's friend would keep her suitably distracted. It was clear that Sarah hadn't come fully prepared to play this game. And why did Sarah care so much about Chuck's opinion of her sexual history? The fact that Sarah cared even a little bit all but confirmed Carina's suspicions.

Once the fare for the evening arrived - the opposite of an epicurean delicacy by Carina's standards - the boys adjourned to the kitchen and the girls were left alone with each other. Sarah pounced again, objecting to Carina's behavior but Carina didn't see it as a problem. This whole evening was Sarah's idea and Carina really hadn't given much thought to Martin. Her responses to him were pretty much automatic and the little bearded man didn't suspect a thing. She didn't have anything to apologize for. It was just a date. He was relatively harmless and she wasn't doing anything _too_ overt with him.

Besides, Carina was far more interested in watching the dynamics between Chuck and Sarah. She was pretty sure that Sarah's objection to her getting cozy with Martin was more about whatever was or was not going on physically between Sarah and Chuck. Sarah had never been concerned about a mark getting the wrong idea before so Carina was pretty sure that the problem was really that Sarah had been keeping her cover boyfriend at arms length. Unlike a true 'mark', he was in on the joke. This was _their_ cover. The only remaining questions were why she hadn't taken the leap and why she was so hypersensitive about that choice.

They were all watching some nature documentary but Carina really couldn't give a shit about the mating and reproductive habits of Emperor penguins. She wasn't interested in the reproductive habits of any animal on the planet other than the two timid ones sitting next to her. She considered the show going on at the other end of the couch to be far more fascinating as she subtly watched Chuck alternate between being engrossed by the movie and watching Sarah when she wasn't looking. He seemed particularly interested in Sarah picking olives off her pizza like she always did.

Carina could read Sarah better than anyone in the world could read Sarah, yet she was still sometimes a mystery to her. Chuck, on the other hand, was an open book. He obviously adored her.

And who wouldn't? The two women were very different creatures but Carina considered Sarah on par with her in the looks department and she never had any lack of self-confidence in that regard, even after - especially after - the government had to put her back together again years ago. But Sarah was also remarkably sweet and sensitive if you knew what to look for - the woman who risked her own life in an attempt to pull her out of hell and stuck her neck out for her dozens of times over the past few years.

Chuck was casting a wide net, actively observing everything about her. Not for the first time Carina wondered how Sarah had ever allowed herself to get dragged into this life. Carina knew what her friend had traded for and traded away and she definitely got the shit end of the deal.

Bryce had been able to bring out pieces of her but nothing close to the woman that Carina knew lay dormant behind walls of her own making hidden from the world. This Chuck guy seemed desperate for any little scrap of insight into her friend and she didn't think it was just to get in her pants. Carina wondered if he would be strong enough to hang in there once he realized just how broken she was. Carina knew. Not the whole story and the experiences were slightly different but it was something they shared.

Sarah for her part wasn't openly adoring Chuck but she had her own tells. Whenever she had seen Sarah with Bryce they never really showed any subtle acts of physical affection. Bryce had once lamented over drinks that 'Sarah' - she had been a Sarah then too - was really only interested in the adrenaline fueled encounters. That there were no quiet moments that led to anything real and their sexual encounters nearly always ended in separate beds when the accommodations allowed.

Whenever she had seen Sarah working a mark she did all the little things like stroke his arm lightly, cuddle into his side, lay her head on his shoulder, let her hands fall to his thigh or allow her fingers to lace with his. But it was never her doing those things. Carina was always able to see the slightest signs of the strain of even those small acts in Sarah's demeanor. Probably because they both felt similarly about it. Sarah had often confided in her that it made her skin crawl.

But she had seen Sarah do all of those things tonight. The heel of her right hand was currently resting on Chuck's thigh and just the tip of Sarah's middle finger was absently tracing tiny, random patterns on Chuck's jeans near his knee while her other fingertips hovered hesitantly. And Carina genuinely smiled when she realized that, despite her declarations that this relationship was a cover, Sarah showed no signs of tension or discomfort when she was in physical contact with Chuck.

Then as if to confirm Carina's theory, Sarah laid her head on Chuck's shoulder and let out a tiny contented-but-silent sigh. It was the one she had witnessed dozens of times when they had shared a hotel suite and Sarah had relaxed into a scalding hot bubble bath while she puttered around the bathroom talking to her. Sarah would say it was part of preserving the cover, and it wasn't earth-shatteringly ecstatic, but it was as happy and content as Carina had ever seen her.

Chuck on the other hand was remarkably uncomfortable. Not in any way that would provoke him into moving from his seat but in a way that indicated the glorious psychological thrill of restrained impulses. He arched his back a bit to adjust his position in his seat but briefly tightened the grip of his arm around Sarah as he did so to ensure his shifting did not accidentally cause her to move away from him. That Sarah didn't flinch at this was another tell. She just looked up at him and asked if he was OK and snuggled back in after receiving a satisfactory answer.

Carina had originally called bullshit on characterizing their relationship as a cover and assumed that they were already intimately involved. If she had based her judgment solely on Sarah she would have stuck with that assessment. But as she watched Chuck react to every touch and breath and move that Sarah made she realized if that were true he would have made some excuse for he and Sarah to leave the room together for at least a few minutes by now. He clearly wanted her and not just in a 'love the one you're with' kind of way.

But he also occasionally had an expression even she had seen a few times in her career. That doubt in a mark when he suspected he was being worked or otherwise doubted the situation and you had to work extra hard to convince him. The convincing part was optional - you could either get him to buy the act or just worked up to a point where, even if he was still suspicious, he lost the ability to care. As Carina watched Chuck subtly inhale the scent of Sarah's hair, Chuck had the look of a man who doubted his luck but no longer cared whether he was right to do so.

Carina smiled to herself as she accepted something that, clearly, neither Chuck nor Sarah had yet realized about themselves or each other.

She was starting to get frustrated with the sexual tension of the whole evening and wondering when either Chuck or Sarah was going to crack - when he would decide to do something about this insufferable tension and either jump up in frustration or pounce on her - or maybe Sarah would be the one to crack and straddle him until she could convince Chuck to carry her to the bedroom.

She could not remember ever seeing Sarah so clearly at the edge of losing her self-control from _something_ other than adrenaline-fueled sexual arousal. Sarah kept glancing at Chuck's mouth and occasionally moistened her own lips whenever he spoke as though she was going to finally do something about it. And she was completely unaware that she was doing it. If this kept up, Carina was going to have to do something to help the two move things along.

Then it happened.

Martin asked something innocuous about travel and she gave some automatic answer. But Chuck, who was back to being engrossed by the movie having temporarily gotten his fill of Sarah-watching, scared the hell out of her when he blurted it out without even realizing it.

_Argentina._

Only a handful of people knew about that op. Being... well, being _her_... Carina was often requested for particularly sensitive missions by multiple agencies. This particular one came from pretty high up and wasn't exactly legal. Not even close, actually. And if Chuck had, as she assumed, looked into her background after meeting her this morning it was even more disturbing.

A few people were in the know but it was only a slight embellishment to say the only ones with the necessary clearance to inquire about her out of the blue and get that information in response were God and the President. A more likely response to such an inquiry would be find yourself detained for questioning.

Thankfully Sarah reacted to his outburst too - that protectiveness showing itself again - and looked toward him when he spoke. Sarah's reaction told her that she had not been the one to tell Chuck about Argentina. Carina was able to school her expression before Sarah looked back to her. If he knew about Argentina, what else did he know? The only thing for certain was that Chuck wasn't simply an analyst.

She could only assume that Sarah realized that she had registered Chuck's comment but she couldn't tell whether or not Sarah was aware of the significance. For a moment she entertained the notion that even Chuck didn't seem to understand the significance but that would be ridiculous.

Martin saved her again by suggesting they go somewhere more private. She took him up on it and then, once outside, made some excuse to get back to her hotel. Alone. Protocol would dictate that Carina check in with her superiors to determine her exposure or possibly even General Beckman and Director Graham.

But Carina had something else in mind.

.

* * *

_Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer_

\- Jean de La Fontaine

* * *

.

Nerd Herd After Hours Service Call, Los Angeles, CA

Thurs Oct 11, 2007, 12:49 am

.

"Hey, Chuck." Carina softly purred before teasingly inviting the stummed young man inside. "Use your feet."

Carina had been seething for nearly two hours. It was an anger she had struggled with for years when confronted by the lies of men. This all consuming rage that she concealed within the facade of a sexual predator.

There was nothing she hated more than being lied to. She put her ass on the line almost daily - often far too literally - and solid intel was life to her. Because of that view there were only two groups of people in her view of the world, those she could trust and those she could not. The former was a pitifully small group of people. CIA held a nearly irrevocable membership in that group but Carina still wanted to know whether she was involved in the analyst's inquiries into her recent activities.

Carina hoped to be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone tonight. She wanted to find out how much Chuck really knew and how he knew it, put him to the test as to whether he deserved a shot with CIA or not and when he failed that test - like they all did - it would be that much easier to slip away with the diamond in the resulting chaos within the team. Chuck's reaction when she opened the door told her it was going to be even easier than she had expected.

She was pissed about being lied to and pissed about Chuck accessing her information and by the time she pushed him down on her bed she had decided that the punishment for both he and CIA for not being honest with her was that she would take Sarah's new boy toy out for a test drive. After all, they clearly hadn't done anything about their mutual attraction yet. Better Sarah find out the truth now.

When she dropped her sheer robe off her shoulders and stood in front of him in nothing but a carefully selected red bra and panties set she was surprised that his first instinct was to call Sarah. She relieved him of his phone and decided to stop messing around and break out the big guns.

She continued to tease him lightly running her hands up and down her own torso and could already see he would break easily. "You're not much of a spy, are you? I don't know how many more clues…" and she smoothly popped open the front clasp on her bra and arched her back to let the thin straps fall from her shoulders to the ground behind her as she jutted out her pert breasts toward him "…I can take off."

"But if Sarah were here…" she continued as Chuck stared dumbstruck into her icy blue eyes when he wasn't glancing down at her topless form. She reached out to stroke his lower lip with her finger tip while she licked a finger of her other hand. "…I couldn't seduce you."

The lying little shit's face was flushed and he was successfully hypnotized by what she was no longer wearing and the promises she was making of what she could do to him with her mouth. Things she learned to do to entice far worse men. Skills she once used just to survive. And, when she embraced the futility of her own life, stopped worrying about whether they were inappropriate. She took what she wanted from whom she wanted. And what she wanted right now was the truth.

"Unless, maybe…" she grabbed him by the tie and pulled herself closer rather than pulling him toward her and she continued toward him with his face inches from her bare breasts. Her favorite perfume, the one that interacted deliciously with her body chemistry, overwhelmed his senses as she finished her thought whispering huskily into his ear "…you're into that sort of thing."

Chuck stuttered out something incomprehensible and drained his champagne flute as she climbed onto the bed and positioned herself behind him and ran her hands across his shoulders. He was relatively thin but he really did have nice shoulders and she was starting to enjoy herself.

She wrapped her arms around him and ran her hands over her friend's fake boyfriend's surprisingly taut, lightly muscled chest and said "Or maybe I'm wrong and you're already sleeping with Sarah." She had already disassociated that name with her friend. Her friend wouldn't lie to her. And anyone worthy of her friend wouldn't so easily be tempted to stray.

"_Are_ you sleeping with Sarah?" she asked as she hooked her legs around him from behind and pulled herself closer. She pressed the heel of her right foot into his inner thigh and slid it slowly up toward his groin as she pressed her breasts into his back. She lightly dragged her rock hard nipples against the rough cloth of the back of his shirt - lightly enough to tease and hard enough that he couldn't help but conjure up the mental image of what she was doing back there - while she pulled him tightly against her with her long legs so that he could feel the warmth of her against the small of his back.

When she sealed the deal maybe she could dig up the massage oil needed to do this properly. She may not be quite as well endowed as this Sarah person her friend was posing as - both of them rather slender but herself even more so - but the saying 'its not the size but how you use it' didn't just apply to men. And she definitely knew how to use it.

It was really just skin. Most of it not even recognizable as hers. Battered canvas stretched across a withered frame. A beautiful doll reassembled from used parts. Her own body just another tool she used, as it was before, to ensure her survival. One of many she now possessed to mercilessly bring down the unsavory criminals of the world as she had once set out to do. Control the situation. Always be the aggressor so she would never again be the victim. It was really all she had left.

He was cute, and they could have a little fun giving him something he would never forget - massaging his body with hers until she begged her for more. And then... maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't. It really rather depended on his answers.

If they were _both_ lying to her but he came clean then maybe she would have him first and let Sarah decide if she still wanted him. After she flaunted the fact that he succumbed to her first. Why couldn't her friend see that these guys were all the same? No matter how cute or sweet, they only said what you think you want to hear. She deserves so much better than that. At least her friend still has something to offer no matter how well she hides it.

Chuck was starting to recover slightly from her initial onslaught. "You...you know that a gentleman never…" God, was he still even _thinking_ of CIA? To her surprise he was still trying to pull away from her despite having next to no leverage in the position they were in - as she had intended. The impressive bulge in his pants under the arch of her foot was telling her he that at least his body wanted to stay right where he was.

She was surprised he hadn't moved to act yet so she decided that she had dangled the bait enough and it was time to set the hook. This guy was still holding on to some sort of loyalty to this Sarah person that he had a massive and apparently tentatively requited but unfulfilled crush on so she deployed her secret weapon. It would leave no survivors.

She nibbled at his ear and, before he could finish his thought, breathed huskily "Oh, got it. Well, that makes sense, considering Bryce."

_How close were the two of you, exactly?_

She hadn't overheard the entire conversation between Chuck and Sarah when she had been conducting her recon but she had heard Chuck ask about Bryce. And she had heard Sarah being her usual evasive self. Employing that philosophy she had once shared that she learned from her father.

Sarah had volunteered that Chuck was new to the spy world and was a nice guy. A jaded spy like...well, like anyone involved in their world other than Sarah's impression of Chuck...wouldn't care about one of them keeping secrets about their past. Would, in fact, prefer not to know and be smart enough not to ask. But she had seen enough of Chuck to know that he was interested in Sarah, that he was essentially a civilian, that he did _seem_ like a nice guy - despite having an unhealthy interest and unexplained access to her mission specifics - and that this was the kind of deception that a nice guy wouldn't take well.

Nice guys were easy to break.

"Br-Bryce? Bryce? What, what are you talking about?" Finally, he relaxed into her and she smiled victoriously. Now the seed of doubt was there. Was he getting nowhere because of Sarah's lingering feelings for another man? One she had told him she was never really friends with? But Carina couldn't see the look on Chuck's face as she began moving her hands down his stomach to claim her prize.

Despite Carina's undeniably pleasurable ministrations, Chuck suddenly felt nauseous. His stomach turned as it once had years before when Bryce was involved with another woman in his life and he completely forgot about what Carina had been trying to do to him as she went in for the kill by exposing Sarah's lie "You don't know about Bryce? Bryce Larkin?"

This was so easy. She didn't even have to lie about it. Just stretch the truth a _tiny_ bit to put it in terms that would resonate with Chuck.

So she said the magic words "Her boyfriend?"

Chuck's mind had disconnected from his body several seconds ago. He felt numb from this revelation but those last two words spurred him into action. His entire body stiffened and he abruptly spun out of her grasp. Carina had been so sure she had won that she was caught completely unprepared and reacted too late to stop him.

She had clearly overplayed her hand. She now wasn't quite as sure that she even had him wavering before she broke out her disastrous secret weapon. It seemed the sure bet had turned out to be a deal breaker. He started to walk aimlessly toward the door then back toward the bed while muttering gibberish "but she said… just ask me… and just partners… just bring your laptop in tomorrow… never really friends… right, no laptop... gotta go…somewhere…"

He hadn't looked directly at her since he stood up and his motions and speech were so erratic that she wasn't entirely sure he wasn't having a seizure of some kind. She also didn't realize he had wandered so close to the door or grabbed his bag at some point in his pacing until he abruptly opened it and slipped out.

She recognized the part of the conversation he had been reliving in his mumbling as she replayed it in her mind. She had overheard most of what they were saying when she had been conducting her surveillance on Sarah. Chuck had tapped his head and said something and she remembered Sarah saying something ending with 'just ask me'.

It had shocked her to hear it and Sarah must have realized her mistake as well because everything that followed was complete bullshit. Well, maybe not quite bullshit now that she thought about what was said and how slippery of a liar Sarah could be. Sarah had said that she and Bryce were 'partners but not really friends'. Sarah was the one who had taught her how to use the truth to lie. _"There are all kinds of ways to_ _lie"_ she had said.

She hadn't told Chuck that she and Bryce didn't sleep together just that they weren't close. She now fully realized how naïve Chuck was and maybe why Sarah was so protective of him. There was no way he would understand that kind of relationship.

The idea of two agents in love was stupid in principle. It just couldn't happen. Maybe one would spontaneously turn stupid and forget that no one, not even their partner, could _truly_ be trusted but the odds of both doing so were laughable. There was nothing romantic or real about Sarah and Bryce and really that had always been Carina's primary problem with him.

She didn't think that either Chuck or Sarah really understood or could accept what was going on between them but it had been obvious to her since she had seen them together. Even that first night when she had witnessed Sarah non-lying to him. She just didn't think until right now that he might be good enough for her. Chuck had just turned down her own best efforts to get him to betray whatever it was he felt for Sarah. She had briefly mistaken his deflation at this whole Bryce thing as him giving in to her.

But he _hadn't_ given in and that was another thing that set him apart from Bryce. About a year ago Carina had known that Sarah had been working with the same guy for almost that entire time off and on. When she had worked with him under the name of Wade Bradley they had run a successful op in Marseille rather quickly and spent the rest of the week enjoying Monte Carlo and the French Riviera and each other.

She had regretted staying silent when she met up with the two of them together a short time later but was also angry with herself for not realizing the type of guy he really was. She hadn't expected them to remain partners for so long or she would have said something. Maybe. But she promised herself she would never let her friend truly get in over her head with a guy who didn't deserve her again.

Carina grabbed her robe from the floor and draped it over her shoulders as she walked toward the window. She looked down to the street below and saw the tiny white car with the logo from Chuck's work pull through the red light at the parking lot exit without even slowing down and counted her blessings that it was so late at night and there was no traffic.

She clutched the thin fabric around her as her earlier anger subsided leaving her feeling chilled to the bone and suddenly feeling as though she may have seriously fucked up in more ways than one.

.

* * *

_A friend is one who knows you_

_and loves you just the same_

\- Elbert Hubbard

* * *

.

Peyman Alahi's Compound

Thurs Oct 11, 2007, 2:45 pm

.

After the three had spent some time scouting the grounds Carina was still trying to figure Chuck out. She had worked with green agents before but she had never seen an agent so nervous so she tried to reassure him. She wasn't trying to seduce him anymore after last night's disaster and he actually did look kind of sexy in that suit. She could tell by the way Sarah had been watching him that she thought the same. He wasn't the typical pretty boy agent even though he was pretty cute and Carina was starting to think that part of his appeal was because of that distinction rather than despite of it.

She pointed out Peyman Alahi and chuckled at Chuck calling him Señor Wookiee. She remembered Sarah saying she had somehow never seen that movie but wondered if Chuck knew how nerdy Sarah could be about some things on the extremely rare occasions when she wasn't in character as the impervious super spy.

She sent him to get a drink hoping he or Sarah would say something to each other and cringed when he didn't even look at her when they passed. She was pleased at the improved odds of pulling off her double-cross but there was a fine line between distracted to the point of missing her true intentions and distracted to the point of getting her killed. She was surprised that the frosty tension between Chuck and Sarah from the ride over had not noticeably dissipated.

.

* * *

.

_Earlier..._

_Sarah was still reeling from her earlier interaction with Chuck at the Weinerlicious early this morning. She knew it was going to come back to bite her in the ass the moment she deflected Chuck's question about her and Bryce with a handful of half-truths the night before last. The night Carina came to town._

_Carina had interfered with men she had shown mild interest in before but this was the worst such thing she had ever done. In the past she had even considered some of her interference to be a favor after later finding out more about the men in question. Carina had become mire and more erratic over the years but this was deliberately cruel, or would have been had Carina known just how much bad blood there was between Chuck and Bryce from years ago or what Bryce's final gift to Chuck had done to his life._

_Sarah was incredibly angry about the whole situation and taking it out on everyone except the person she held most responsible - herself. She had almost made a similar gaff when she mentioned Pakistan and Carina in the same sentence to Chuck. It was a defining moment in the history between the two women and never far from Sarah's mind whenever she thought of her friend or what this life can take from you if you dare to become attached to it but it certainly wasn't Sarah's story to tell._

_Bryce _was_ her story to tell. She didn't know why she had tried to hide it. The current situation was proof that no good could come of it. She wasn't sure whether Chuck was more upset with her for having once been involved with Bryce or for lying to him about it but his reaction provided a clue._

I thought you were supposed to be good at lying.

_That had hurt her more than she could have imagined. She deserved being called out for the lie itself but the implication was that he saw her as a liar. By profession or by choice. The hurt wasn't even indignance or some misguided notion that the accusation was inaccurate._

_He saw right through her. Not through each individual lie but through to the core of her. Where everyone else looking at a candle saw the flame he saw the burning wick. The fundamental thing beneath the obvious. And some days, that seemed like a good thing. Like he saw her as she wished she could be and not as a ruthless assassin. But could she really expect him to look through a blatant but artfully told lie, one told by someone trained nearly their entire life to lie effectively, and somehow see the reasons for it?_

_She thought back to something she said to him in anger during the Elena Truffaut debacle: _I never asked you to believe me; I asked you to trust me.

_She thought back further to what she considered The First Day. To their tenuous pact on the beach that morning where he hadn't said he would trust her but that he would try to trust her. Knowing that he was a fool to do so._

_But she still didn't know the best way she could have approached answering his question. The completely honest approach would have been to say she and Bryce provided comfort to each other - or simply were intimately involved - or were basically fuck buddies. Or some bizarre combination of the three but none of those sounded entirely accurate and all of them made it sound so bad. Like she was incapable of a real relationship._

_But Carina's more conventional characterization seemed somehow worse. Casey had picked up Carina first, then stopped for Sarah and she addressed the issue the instant she closed the door behind her._

_"What did you tell him?!" Sarah's voice was low but full of venom._

_Carina just smiled at her and tried her best to look innocent "What? I just asked how you were doing since your boyfriend's funeral."_

_Any retort from Sarah was cut off by a sharp laugh from the driver's seat of the limo. Casey hadn't wanted to be seen outside Sarah's hotel so he had stayed in the car when he picked her up and Sarah now realized the driver partition was not soundproof and didn't want to continue this for an audience. She sat back fully against the plush leather seats, crossed her arms and glared at a smirking Carina._

_Lies and trust. Which of the two was the fundamental thing? The thing she wanted him to see._

_And why did she care whether he thought she was incapable of a real relationship? Especially when she herself didn't have the answer to that question. Carina had taken the easy route and used the term boyfriend. Of course that would resonate with a normal guy like Chuck but it would also imply a lot of things that weren't entirely true. Even though - at the time - she herself may have considered applying that same label not really having any experience with anything resembling a normal boyfriend._

_Why did she care whether he could draw a dispassionate distinction between a normal boyfriend and whatever she and Bryce were? But if there was one reaction she didn't want from Chuck it was anything that was dispassionate. That would be counter to his nature. Whatever he believed in, he believed in passionately. And, personal relationships aside, he believed in her. She didn't want him to believe in her in any way other than passionately._

_But what about the times when that passion became subtle probing advances and she deflected or ignored him. Was he supposed to see through that too? To understand what she was really thinking and all the reasons - both personal and professional - she was unwilling to act. Why it was a bad idea. Why it could lead to nothing but hurt for one or both of them. It was her job - and her personal commitment - to protect him. Even from her. Was he supposed to see all that too?_

_Like everything else with Chuck, it was all or nothing. She couldn't have it both ways._

_She sighed, broke her stare-down with Carina and wondered if that conclusion was her own or some sort of telepathic message from her friend. And no matter what crazy-ass thing Carina did she always considered her to be her friend. Carina would push her, challenge her, trick her, tease her...but never deliberately hurt her. They'd been through too much together. So it was no surprise that, wherever it originated, this latest revelation had the distinctive aftertaste of I told you so._

_Ellie, Devon and Morgan were all working so it was safe to pick Chuck up at his place where Casey inexplicably did exit the car and hold the door for him. Since Sarah did not have time to fully lay it out for Chuck this morning, Casey had coordinated the mission specifics earlier - over the phone with Sarah, at the Buy More with Chuck and at Carina's hotel when he picked her up - and Sarah listened to Casey reminding Chuck of his assigned tasks._

_"Casey, are you smiling?" Sarah heard the usual light-heartedness she looked forward to hearing each day in his teasing tone and relaxed a little as Chuck continued to joke with Casey as he stepped into the limo "Something funny? What'd I miss?"_

_"Oh nothing, just the ladies gabbing about Walker's ex." Casey made sure to say loud enough for both Carina and Sarah to hear as Chuck half entered the passenger area and froze when he locked eyes with Sarah._

_"Is that a fact?" Chuck said coldly, more to Sarah than as a response to Casey._

_"Chuck, we're on a mission." she replied coldly knowing it was exactly the wrong thing to say and wrong way to say it even as it left her mouth. The unspoken We'll-talk-about-it-later hung heavy in the air. Neither of them believed it._

_"Right." he muttered in answer to both what was said and what was not as the door closed behind him and he chose to sit next to Carina in the rear facing seats rather than next to Sarah. Carina patted Chuck's knee and let her hand linger there. When he made no move to remove it, Carina just returned Sarah's gaze and raised one eyebrow after shifting her eyes for an instant toward the hand on his knee. Sarah turned her head to look out the side window and thought she heard another light chuckle from behind the partition._

_The brief exchange put Chuck in a petulant mood until they reached the party and he spent he entire ride gazing out the window that Sarah was not facing. Sarah expected him to bring the subject back up as soon as they exited the car and she thought she might be able to look him in the eye and calmly and rationally state that there was a difference between what she had with Bryce and what he considered a boyfriend. That she didn't mean to lie but was unsure of how to explain it. Attempt to skirt around why she felt the need to clarify. If that was unavoidable and opened the floodgates of truth, if it gave him more insight into her than she was quite ready to give, then consequences be damned._

_But Chuck was surprisingly cold and professional and immediately sought out his previously assigned areas for reconnaissance..._

.

* * *

.

Carina felt a little guilty about ruining Sarah's outing. Carina had combined dates with missions before or combined some other secondary-plan of her own with a mission. Hell, she was doing it now. But Carina was pretty certain Sarah hadn't worn that particularly provocative dress strictly for mission purposes. It was another example of how green Chuck was - he risked drawing attention to himself by _not_ checking her out - but Carina didn't think the way Sarah's face dropped after he passed her without so much as a glance was any sort of commentary on Chuck's lack of tradecraft.

Sarah was just as green when it came to trying to show a guy how she felt. Or at least tell him, she was pretty good at showing. Carina knew that Sarah had chosen that dress for Chuck whether Sarah herself consciously realized it or not. But wearing a dress like that in this place wasn't going to make a genuine guy like Chuck feel any less threatened. And Chuck was either so angry or so disappointed that Sarah had lied to him that he didn't notice how crestfallen she was at his apparent failure to notice her.

For the first time since arriving at the party she and Sarah were alone together and after a quick run down of the guard staffing at the two exits she had been responsible for investigating Sarah asked the question Carina had been expecting all day. "Why did you tell him about Bryce? You compromised my cover."

Carina tried not to react to that the way she wanted to. That was complete bullshit. She hadn't done shit to Sarah's cover. She didn't say anything about Bryce in front of anyone else - especially people who were being deceived into believing that Sarah and Chuck were a couple.

And Chuck was Sarah's partner. It was _his_ responsibility to set it aside and preserve their cover and, his coldness notwithstanding, Chuck hadn't done anything to affect their cover that she had seen. Of the two, the analyst was being more professional and Carina couldn't resist pointing that out. "Like you told Chuck, we're on a mission here, Sarah. Try and keep your private life and work life separate for a change."

"Fuck you, Carina."

"And there it is. That took a lot longer than usual." Carina couldn't help but react to Sarah's aggressiveness. "Who are you trying to impress with that number anyway?" Carina asked looking pointedly at Sarah's exposed skin from the cleavage-revealing neckline that plunged all the way to her waist "Alahi? Or the analyst?"

She had planned to point out to Sarah that Chuck kept glancing at her from across the yard and kept glaring at the men who were doing more than glancing if she hadn't come at her like that.

After further assessment of the grounds, Carina led them to a glass door where she picked the lock to gain entry. Chuck had been very professional and surprisingly helpful to this point - he had been the one to identify the blind spot based on combining their reconnaissance and his knowledge of the field of view of these particular cameras. He was pretty smart and these types of insights seemed to come easily to him - it _was_ kinda sexy - but she heard him behind her apparently unable to contain himself. "So, I guess if this was you and Bryce, you'd be breaking into the bedroom, huh?"

Sarah shut him down pretending that she was the consummate professional despite her earlier comments to Carina and Carina smirked at her hypocrisy, barely able to suppress her laugh. There was more than met the eye to this guy. He was smart and funny and apparently brutally efficient with his words when he had an axe to grind.

It was Sarah's own fault for not being up front with him but something about the way he had known and said Bryce's first name gave Carina the impression that Chuck had more knowledge of him than simply knowing the name of Sarah's former partner. She wondered how much more there was to it than she was aware of but she was in mission-mode and her primary thought was that this rift was something she could use to her advantage if they tried to prevent her from retrieving _her_ diamond.

Once they got into the secured room and Sarah was distracting Alahi, Chuck's obvious disgust at the ogling and groping made Carina acutely aware of his naiveté in two ways. First, and most importantly, Chuck was going to be distracted enough that he wouldn't realize her plan until it was too late. And second, Carina was going to have to have a talk with him at some point if this partnership between Chuck and Sarah evolved the way she suspected it still might. Sarah had done a lot worse than flirt and allow herself to be pawed at a little and Sarah was a fucking saint compared to herself. He needed to get over that kind of thing if he was going to be involved with a spy like Sarah.

Luckily, Chuck hadn't been completely distracted. The electric trap on the diamond would have absolutely fried her if it hadn't been for Chuck so she felt a little bit guilty when they fled to the beach. But the seeds she had planted for Chuck to distrust Sarah bore fruit and she was honestly more than a little disappointed in him.

When he turned on Sarah and asked which lie she was referring to, Carina wasn't sure which of them she felt worse for. Sarah for finding out he didn't trust her or more importantly _understand_ her or Chuck for manipulating him like that. Either way the chaos had its intended effect and none of them had any reason to suspect the submersible jet-ski she had called the field office to deploy after Chuck had fled her room last night. Carina had what she came for and at least Chuck and Sarah both had a better idea of where they stood now. Wherever they went from here was up to them.

Once she reached the shore she called Sarah and felt relief rush through her. She played at taunting her but just wanted to make sure she was safe. She said she knew Sarah would get out of there - and she did - but she wanted to be sure. She would let her cool down for a while before stopping in to say goodbye and maybe Chuck could work out his trust issues and his issues with the life they had chosen.

It would be a relief to know that Sarah had someone she could rely on if he managed to get his head out of his ass.

.

* * *

_Love is blind;_

_friendship closes its eyes_

\- Friedrich Nietsche

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA

Thurs Oct 11, 2007, 2:35 pm

.

She couldn't believe Casey fell for that again. Of course, the circumstances had been a little different the first time and the handcuffs were just a little reminder of that.

She was three for three with the men on this mission - and that was only counting teammates and civilians - which was equal parts gratifying and disheartening. When she went to retrieve the diamond from Martin she was surprised to find Chuck holding it. The rambling about sock drawers and spare change and pizza irritated her to the point of frustration but she reluctantly admitted to herself that it was kind of adorable in a weird way as he looked down at his plate and back up at her with an expression resembling...inspiration?

And that thought barely preceded her getting clocked in the temple with a flying plate. She let out an "Ow!" and mentally adjusted her record to three for four.

"Fine it's me." She responded when he called her by name.

"Yeah, I should have realized it wasn't one of the other six foot tall female ninjas I've crossed paths with lately."

God, he was so frustrating but she took off her mask. "The mask is so Martin wouldn't ID me." Which she now realized was stupid of her. To his point, who else could it be? "Now give me the diamond."

He was under the impression that Sarah was in some kind of trouble. He wanted her help and wasn't taking no for an answer. Carina decided to test her theories on Chuck once more by reminding him of a fundamental truth. "Oh, come on, Chuck. You know this thing of ours? We're all in it for ourselves. It's what we do."

"That's not what Sarah does." _Oh, you poor, sweet boy. That's _exactly_ what Sarah does. What makes you think you're so different._ Carina thought she had him figured out. Maybe she would check Sarah's situation on her way out of town just to be sure. She was so close to getting away with the diamond she just had to convince him that Sarah didn't need their help. He let Sarah down earlier, it shouldn't be hard to make him do it again. But he surprised her by sticking up for Sarah despite however he felt about being lied to about Bryce. And then he brought up another thing he should have no knowledge of.

He brought up Pakistan.

She didn't want to think about what Sarah may have told him and he didn't elaborate further. Sarah had sacrificed herself to try to save her that day almost five years ago. She still wasn't sure if she herself had been saved or condemned but she knew she owed her for trying. She should have left her there to die but maybe he was right - that's not what Sarah does - not for the few people she loves. Then Chuck did the last thing she expected and handed her the diamond.

"You want it? There you go. But with or without you, I'm gonna go help Sarah."

He certainly was dedicated enough to her. She couldn't let him go alone. Sarah would never forgive her if she did that and he got himself killed. She sighed and removed the temptation as she handed the diamond back to him. "Just hang on to it? In case I change my mind."

Once they arrived, Carina geared up with the weapons in her trunk and sought a little more clarification. "I don't get it, Chuck. Thought you and Sarah were on the outs?"

"I made a mistake. I'm still getting used to how you guys need to lie about who you are."

Well that was something. Maybe this guy _was_ the right one for the job. He's better than 99 percent if he can admit he was wrong - another thing that set him apart from Bryce. And Sarah did warn her that he was new to all this.

Maybe it wasn't that he didn't understand CIA - maybe it was that he was only just starting to.

.

* * *

_Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light_

\- Helen Keller

* * *

.

Courtyard of Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence

Thurs Oct 11, 2007, 5:50 pm

.

Carina was a little surprised that Sarah left him alone with her to say goodbye but she guessed that meant that Sarah trusted him. She begrudgingly admitted to herself that she was probably right in doing so but couldn't help one last half-hearted attempt to trip him up. "Sure you don't wanna come back to my hotel room?"

If he was really flustered by her proposition he hid it well. She now realized part of why Sarah was having so much trouble understanding her feelings for him. He was impossible to read - sometimes he was so confident and sometimes he was so unsure. He wasn't cut out for the spy life and she understood why Sarah wanted to look out for him but elements of a competent spy shone through occasionally. "As flattered and…intimidated…as I am by your proposition, why me?"

He had a lot to learn. And for the first time she considered that maybe he had as much baggage as her friend did. Sarah didn't need someone perfect; she needed someone who would take the time to understand her and maybe they could help each other. So she decided to throw him a bone. One of the few times she would ever give someone advice about their love life. "Well, you're sort of cute-ish. But the real reason is...I love taking what Sarah wants."

She could see the wheels turning. She couldn't come right out and tell him. He would never believe her. But the truth is that Sarah is horrible at relationships. If you could even call them that. And that included Bryce. Initiating them - there had been a few guys that Sarah had shown interest in but talked herself out of making any kind of move. Ending them - the thing with Bryce had been over for months but neither of them realized it or wanted to admit that something needed to change. She was afraid of every part of it. As far as she knows Sarah has never had a real one. "What, me? No. Sarah...Sarah doesn't want me?"

Carina smiled at that - the fact that it took a vague comment from her riddled with implications to make him even consider and then immediately discount the possibility.

She thought about all the pretty boy agents including Larkin who couldn't believe that either the woman now known as Sarah or the woman now known as Carina wouldn't fall all over themselves to go to bed with them. Unfortunately, Larkin had been right about both of them. Neither Sarah nor her especially had truly cared deeply for Bryce and she doubted that he had been bothered by that in any way at all.

She thought of the disgusting marks who hadn't questioned a thing when either of them had come on to them. The people in either agency who only saw them for what they could do and not who they were. And this guy - for whom Sarah was clearly feeling things she didn't know how to cope with - had no idea.

He wasn't bluffing when he said he would help Sarah without Carina's help if he had to. They were barely dancing around the edge of a relationship yet she was pretty sure that Chuck would literally die for Sarah if it came to it. How could Sarah possibly see that as anything but a good thing in a guy? Other than the increased likelihood of it actually happening in their profession, of course.

And he really doesn't see it yet. The way she already relies on him and the way she needs him to believe in her. How unsure she is around him. Carina decided to continue bending her rule against offering relationship advice and gave him the benefit of her ability to read her enigmatic friend. "She probably doesn't even know it herself yet...But I do."

As she walked past him to leave she cupped his chin, raised herself up slightly on her toes and lightly kissed his cheek as she whispered an endorsement she didn't think she would ever give to any man "Take good care of our girl."

She smiled at his incredulous expression as she walked away. So he was a little clueless but then again so was Sarah. He wasn't the agent that Bryce was but they had Casey to watch their backs in the field. Carina trusted this one far more than Bryce with her friend's fragile heart. He wasn't trying to get into her friend's pants - or at least he wasn't _just_ trying to get into her pants.

After years of subtly screening Sarah's prospective suitors and weeding out a lot of assholes she was pleased to have finally - _finally_ \- found her associating with a guy who above all else she didn't think would callously hurt her.

If Sarah could just learn to open up a little bit maybe he would be good for her. If she ever managed to open up a lot maybe she would be good for him.

_Yeah..._ she thought as she walked away _...he'll do_.

.

* * *

.

038: And the Sky was Made of Amethyst

.

Pakistan border region, near Angoor Ada, temporary structure;

May 2002, retrieval in progress

.

Rachel had reclaimed Dani's tiny pistol from a nearby table. The OTs-21 was designed specifically for concealment with no protrusions that might snag on clothing but pitiful accuracy at more than twenty yards and middling stopping power. Rachel didn't know how Dani had obtained the Russian made pistol but she had modified this one to take SP-7 'Black Tips' that packed more of a punch. It also only held five rounds but even if Dani had fired one shot from it before it was taken from her, four was all she would need.

The four men not killed in the raid were lined up on their knees as most of her squad were tending to Dani. When they had released her she ran in there too but couldn't watch. Neither could Connors. Anders was their best field medic and was doing what he could. She just looked so pale. Rachel hadn't acknowledged that she was still naked too until Ramirez covered her with a blanket and brought her out to question the prisoners. She suspected more as a distraction that anything productive but she had other plans. Major Rico had finally been able to call in military assistance, including a medivac chopper. She didn't have much time.

Two of the six had been killed in the attack. They got off easy. Unfortunately they all would. She worked the line from right to left starting with the tall man who had assaulted Dani multiple times in her presence. She raised the tiny pistol and he defiantly yelled "I'm not telling you shit you bitch!"

She held the blanket around her shoulders with her left hand as she lowered the pistol slightly and squeezed. Number one continued yelling as blood pooled from his groin. There was a reason Dani called the Black Tips 'rippers'.

She stood perfectly still until he slumped over and then took a step to her left with the angle of her arm unchanged. "This one..." she said to Ramirez, who was standing mutely next to her with his rifle at the ready "...said his friend told him to take Dani's face off so I could say goodbye to her. When she screamed, I screamed and you came in."

Number two sat quaking with his eyes closed but not saying a word when Rachel squeezed again. His eyes shot open when he screamed but realized she had shot him in the leg. "You're not going to kill me?"

"Not yet."

He chuckled a few times before looking at his thigh spurting blood "Well, help me!"

"I didn't say I would help you or let you live. And I didn't kill you... yet. That's your femoral artery. You have about as much time as your friend did."

She really wanted the one who had performed most of the torture but he had been called away to organize the retreat. Once number two wailed and thrashed about with his hand and ankles zip tied together and the ties bound to each other for a little over three minutes before stilling completely, Rachel took another step to her left.

"I want names!" she roared as she pointed the pistol alternating between number three's head and number four's. "Whoever gives me the most, gets to walk out of here."

They couldn't answer fast enough, talking over each other, being reprimanded for naming the four dead men who certainly didn't count, until the final tally was in. Rachel knelt in front of number four as the sound of choppers approaching reached her ears and asked quietly "Do you think you deserve to live?"

Number four shook his head and sobbed. Rachel's face was inches from his when she placed the barrel under his chin and squeezed.

Number three slouched but claimed his prize "I get to walk out of here. You said. Who gives the most walks out."

"I did, didn't I?" Rachel gripped the pistol with the same hand holding her blanket up, face splattered with the blood of her previous execution, and held out her open right hand. Ramirez placed the handle of his knife in her hand and she cut the zip tie holding his ankles together. "Stand slowly. Move slowly and you get to walk out of here."

He did as told and she trailed behind him. He breathed more deeply as he neared the door. The sun was starting to set and the first of two medivac choppers was landing outside and he laughed as he reached the door and stepped outside.

"You're out." Rachel said as she squeezed again with the barrel of the pistol inches from the back of number three's head.

Ramirez quickly cut his hand ties as he had done with the others only to turn to see Rachel retching and collapsing to the ground. The medics were rushing in, two to the back room and two to him. He asked for a gurney and something to calm her - some sort of sedation - but told them the agent in the back needed their full attention.

Rachel was sitting upright now with visions of a Paris street in her mind. She knew nothing of that woman. Only that she had killed her because someone had handed her a picture. Two dozen more on various missions with all the reasoning of war. She only knew that these men had hurt her friend. And she had killed them. What was she now?

.

* * *

.

Her boys left her on the gurney as medics attended to her. Some returned inside to secure the scene but most we're giving their reports to the military support that had arrived. The medics, satisfied that Rachel was relatively unharmed except for severely sprained shoulders, finally listened to her pleas to focus on her friend and left her side after giving her an injection so she would be still and not hurt herself further until she could be examined more fully. The full compliment of medics were attempting to care for Agent Lassiter who had begun screaming in pain again after waking when they were extracting her.

She looked up at a twilight sky that was turning the most beautiful shade of purple as she felt the warmth in her veins extending to her entire body. She closed her eyes and wondered again what had happened to delay their rescue and heard the crunch of boots slowly approaching. She felt a presence next to her but didn't react until she heard a voice she had hoped to never hear again.

"Well, well, well. Graham's precious little girl finally made it out to visit the little shithole she had me sent to."

Her eyes flew open as she realized the man speaking was Jason Peterson. She tried to squirm away as he placed a hand on her thigh and looked her up and down in the same lecherous way he had once before.

"But you don't look too worse for wear." he offered cheerily. "I had hoped to leave you in there longer so our new friends could show you a good time but it looks like the other bitch took your medicine for you." Her body's reaction to the sedative seemed inconsistent, her limbs felt like she was swimming in concrete but she felt ill at the clear awareness of his touch.

"I guess you should have considered a moment like this when you went crying to Graham." her instructor and tormentor for a brief moment in time spat at her.

She _had_ considered this moment - many times. But in those daydreams she had her full faculties and could have done any number of things to show him what she thought of his 'instruction'. She could feel her consciousness surrendering to the sedatives she had been given, fading away with her opportunity.

"Seems they planned on selling you to some pretty nasty traffickers. That would have been fun - little hellcat like you drugged out of your mind 24/7 for the rest of your life. Would've kept me warm at night. Shame I couldn't have delayed your team a bit more. Maybe we'll just keep you sedated once you're in _my_ camp. I'll look into some more interesting travel arrangements for you. I don't think those kinds of people care much who the seller is, especially if he just wants a problem to go away and turns down his cut."

She could also feel the now-warm metal of the tiny Malysh pistol Ramirez had left tucked between her right hand and her thigh knowing it would make her feel better. Safer. And she wondered if it _had_ been fully loaded with its pitiful five shots. She became vaguely aware that her friend's screams had stopped and wondered if she had been sedated or had succumbed completely to her injuries.

She looked at the sneering excuse for a man leering down at her and whispered his first name as she had once been told to address him, beckoning him to come closer with her left index finger as though she had a secret to tell. She cringed at his closeness recalling that awful night that he had tried to take advantage of her naïveté, the countless others he had done the same to and the words that were tattooed on her memory.

She should have killed him then - months ago. Maybe the rescue would have gone as planned. Maybe Dani wouldn't have been as badly injured as what she had briefly seen of her. She couldn't be sure that it would have ended up any better if she hadn't let him live.

But she hadn't been a killer then. Didn't know what it was to take a life. But there was one thing she _was_ sure of.

She was a killer now.

As he positioned his ear near her mouth he couldn't see her smile as she summoned all her strength for one desperate act.

"...dance for me, baby..." she whispered and was delighted that her body's slowed responses allowed the necessary time for his reaction to clearly confirm that he realized the barrel of a pistol was under his chin just as she squeezed.

_Five_.

That was all she could think in relief as the last bullet in the gun tore through his throat and out the top of his skull. Everything was a syrupy haze. In her increasingly altered state she nearly laughed when his eyes widened, just before they bulged as did the top of his skull before it erupted.

She let the spent pistol clatter to the ground and let her head droop to her right. One of the medics was straddling Dani's naked body performing chest compressions while another tried desperately to secure an Ambu bag over her ruined face. She thought she would have felt some satisfaction as the gory evidence of her revenge rained down all around her. As it was, in her stupor the only distinct emotion she could identify was regret. Regret that some of the medics were abandoning her friend - running toward her seemingly in slow motion - in a futile attempt to aid the insect she had just squashed.

Her last conscious effort was to look straight up as the tears fell from her eyes. She became hyper aware of her own breathing, willing the rising and falling of her own chest to somehow force breath into Dani. It had all been for nothing. This awful, petty man had tried to hurt her and instead had killed her friend. The drugs were overtaking her at last and the emerging stars swam erratically in a darkening purple sky before she yielded to oblivion.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

...


	15. XV: Fallen Angels, So Fast to Kill

...wherein Sarah nearly makes a terrible mistake and Carina provides an endorsement of sorts; different incarnations of the two women in different times reflect on many aspects of the lives they lead...

Canon Reference: Final moments of episode 104 ('Wookiee')

Contents: Welp, it finally happened. A 20K installment (shudder) although it's the notes that put it over the top. Three chapters (best break-point is probably after the first of the three); one canon-plus (Chuck / Sarah; 6,100 words), one post-canon (Sarah / Carina; 9,000) and one non-canon (CATs flashback; 3,400); another huge installment but I wanted to start moving through the episodes a little quicker; this wraps up most of what I want to say about Carina and related topics at this point in fewer than 60K words over three installments consisting of eleven chapters (just consider this arc my NaNoWriMo entry).

A/N: So, last time...that was Pakistan. Certainly brutal and uncomfortable but definitely as low as we'll go. Honestly, what a horrible geopolitical choice from canon. These two women can really get stuff done in most environments but certain regions of strategic interest at that time would probably not be viable undercover assignments. It wont get that dark again for a while, if at all so stay with me...

Don't get hung up on certain alias names that you come across. The full reasoning is explained in the end notes. And you thought we had seen the last of Carina for a while? Heavens no. I have to take full advantage of any opportunity to interject Carina into the proceedings because she will be absent for a while after this. So even though she exited screen left in canon at the end of last chapter there's still more of her to come and she has to get the last word. And there's lots of words. Seriously, that chapter is pretty talky.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Who Wants to Be a Millionaire_, _Candyman_, _Tangled_ (because Flynn is Chuck) or any songs by Mötley Crüe (explicitly, even though it may be too on the nose) or P!nk (less so, some inspiration from the song 'Timebomb'), _Bones_ (specifically, Episode 125 or 6.19) or _The Powerpuff Girls_ (which is being rebooted in 2016; rejoice!) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XV: Fallen Angels, So Fast to Kill

* * *

.

039: Message to No One - Day 21

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; Thurs Oct 11, 2007, 9:20 pm

.

This mission report is driving her insane.

The mission itself was completely fubar as missions involving 'Carina' tended to be. Sarah was sitting cross-legged in the center of her bed writing the narrative from scratch for the third time in an attempt to downplay some of the missteps they had both made when Chuck hadn't trusted her. It was yet another way she was trying to protect him - this time from the perceptions of her superiors. Or more specifically from Graham as he would be the only one reading this report before he compared it to Casey's report via General Beckman and it promptly disappeared.

She feared certain events, actions or choices could be perceived as an ongoing inability to keep Chuck out of harm's way and rash decisions could be made. There was no way he could know these things about her world - stranger in a strange land that he was - and she certainly didn't want to be the one who opened the figurative door into her world any wider.

When she heard the knock at her _actual_ door her initial reaction was relief to be able to step away from the report for a few minutes but she realized as she stood that it came with a conversation she had been both looking forward to and dreading. She really didn't want to be pressured to explain anything or answer any more questions about her and Bryce. She had never bothered to define what it was between them to herself - didn't want to think about what it was and was not and what that said about her - and stumbling over it now would only make his imagination run wild.

She took a deep breath and as she checked the peep hole she couldn't help but smile at the agreed upon dinner wielded like a peace offering. And she suddenly realized that she was absolutely starving. This door she could open, even though inviting him in - both figuratively and literally - was still daunting for all the same reasons.

So she stifled her smile and opened the door to see what he had to say for himself and was met with a simple "Hey." Not the most eloquent of starts but God, that smile...

She gave him enough room to deposit part of his burden on the table by the door and he lifted the lid of the pizza box - she supposed that he did so to let her evaluate whether the price of admission had been met.

"Vegetarian. No olives." he explained. "It's the only thing I know about you that's true. You don't like olives." It wasn't even an accusation, just a fact. He was trying so hard to get to know her, even after their disagreements over Bryce. Or more accurately, after her lying about her prior relationship with the dead man. So desperate for any scrap of information about her that he has resorted to analyzing her eating habits.

But it's not the only thing he knows about her that's true. He sees so much more but he doesn't trust what he sees. And she doesn't blame him. Recent Carina-assisted missteps notwithstanding, she knows she is a really good liar.

"Thank you. Come in."

"Look, I'm...I'm sorry about the beach." Chuck began saying what he came to say immediately upon being granted entry. "You're absolutely right. I shouldn't let my feelings affect the mission." He was just as prone to jealousy or any other emotion as anyone but once he had a moment to think he didn't hide behind excuses. He owned it. But he was apologizing a lot lately when it seemed like she should be the one doing the apologizing.

Apologizing for not being able to let him know that he's not the only one simultaneously studying and fearing whatever this mutual desire or attraction or gravitational pull is between the two of them. She has seen him watching her and knows - no matter how kind and sweet he is - what he wants. And she just wishes he realized it wasn't one-sided because she would never be able to admit it to him.

Apologizing for not being able to let him get to know the real her. As great as the physical attraction between them may be, incredibly, she also knows that's not all he wants from her. She's never really permitted any man to know anything real about her - or let them know her at all for more than a day or two - and most were perfectly fine with that. She was sure a few thought they were using her when the truth was they were mere distractions from her own heightened sense of mortality.

She never quite affected that whole '_I'm doing you a huge favor, you're welcome_' air that her ginger friend had mastered but she did occasionally come to join her teammates in partaking in the post-mission affirmations of their physical survival to various degrees.

It was really the same behaviors she fell into with Bryce that she at one time tried to justify as a relationship until she realized it was just as shallow, impersonal and anonymous as dancing and making out or more with some good-looking random guy with no intention of seeing him ever again. Pretending to be a human being while actively avoiding any true intimacy. Fooling herself into thinking she and Bryce shared anything other than repetition of the same dance. Repetition wasn't a relationship any more than physical acts necessarily equated with intimacy.

But Chuck... he wanted to _know_ her. The things that made her who she is. Made her what she is. Possibly revealing the _nature_ of what she is - something she was sure would cure him of his curiosity. The thought is disturbing and frightening and incomprehensible to her. Yet she was strangely curious what such a good person would make of her and whether that would change her opinion of him.

His curiosity isn't exactly unwelcome. Just very, very inconvenient. And dangerous. And the possibility - the strong possibility - does exist that he would never look at her the same way. It's as much losing that look - the one that makes her feel like someone not defined by all the awful things she has done professionally and short-sighted things she has done personally - as it is fear of confirmation that she truly is as awful as the woman in the mirror often accuses her of being.

If it were just a physical thing it wouldn't scare her nearly so much. Its the fact that he seems able to see right through her despite all of her training and experience. She just can't bring herself to give him even a small glimmer of hope knowing that she could be taken away from here without so much as a 'Goodbye' whether she lets him in further or not. But most certainly shortening her time with him if she does let him in.

Sarah led him over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Chuck couldn't realize what a concession it is for her to let him in to her private residence like this. Its not much but its her only refuge from the mission and she finds that she doesn't feel self-conscious at all about him being here despite his always scanning for new information about her.

He grabbed one of the chairs from the window and took a seat facing her as he continued "...and, um, if you and Bryce...if you had a...thing. Well, that makes sense. He always got the great girls."

Sarah was initially just pleased that he's not still obsessing about the fact that she was once intimately involved with the 'Fett to his Solo'. But then she suddenly found herself fighting back a massive blush at the compliment he worked in there - slyly and indirectly as he often did - about being one of the 'great girls'. She ignored for the moment the idea that Bryce somehow 'got' her and reveled in the knowledge that he seemed to still think of her the way he had that first night when he came to her door bearing flowers and oblivious to her true agenda.

And it's frustrating to think that if, in an alternate universe, the three of them were normal people at a party in college or at one of Ellie's courtyard parties and Chuck and Bryce had approached her, Chuck would have conceded to Bryce out of habit. And she would have been stupid enough to let him. That many women would. That some other girl Chuck deemed more approachable or more 'in his league' would have hit the jackpot. That she herself would never know what she missed out on. Was missing out on now partly because she had never considered finding someone she thought about this way.

It had been a little juvenile of Chuck to be jealous of someone she had known long before him but that was the very thing he was apologizing for. Hurts from Bryce ran deeper than she originally knew and it was a visceral reaction. But one he wouldn't have had if he were not inclined to be jealous of anyone involved with her. Involved in what he interpreted as a way he wanted to be involved with her.

Explaining her partnership with Bryce meant explaining the similar choices someone facing an unnaturally short, bleak future might make. Choices inconceivable to someone with actual hopes and dreams and thoughts of a future that extended beyond the next mission. Choices made just to feel alive and human and not completely reprehensible for a little while. The way she felt now when he simply looked at her and smiled. And that told her everything she needed to know about how carefully to tread now.

"I just wish I knew something real about you." he said with a sigh. And Sarah couldn't help the alarms that went off in her head at that. It seemed so little to ask but the rush of thoughts staggered her.

Surely he deserves one scrap of information. It means so much to him. But she suddenly can only think of the things that she _can't_ say to him. That she thinks he's one of the 'great guys' now seems so trite since he said it first and she better be damn sure she knows what she's doing if she ever says something like that to encourage his obvious interest in her.

"Can't you just tell me just one true thing? Just...just one, like...like where'd you grow up? Or...or if that's too much, I get it. I get it if that's too much. What's... what's your name? What's your real name?"

She knew it had been a mistake when Chuck suspected that she had killed Dr. Zarnow and she had emphasized that Sarah was not her real name. When she had claimed that trust and truth were different animals seeing now that, in his world, they are not. And she wondered if every time he called her Sarah since that day it stuck in his throat for the falsehood that it was.

As a hint of panic started to rise her training began to take over. Armor - layers and layers of it, some from instruction some forged in pain and all of it battle tested - sliding into place. It has served her well in protecting operational security and the physical safety of her various covers. This is the first time she has ever felt this exposed due to a personal conversation and she realizes it is as far as she has allowed a personal conversation to progress in...possibly, ever.

He's already burrowed deeper than anyone has ever managed and has no idea how frightening it is to her that she is considering taking the leap of letting him in. Of lifting that final barricade between him and answering the questions that would eventually reveal the truth of her in all its bloody, deceitful, shallow, sometimes coldly calculating, sometimes impetuous glory.

If she didn't have any remaining ties to family to worry about maybe she could tell him her real name. Or where she grew up. And it's maddening that the whole point is that he wants to know something small but _meaningful_ about her and she's sitting here screening every possible answer to ensure that they are meaningless. Or, worse, behaving as though he even realizes the interrogation technique he is employing by asking for something small and inconsequential just to get the subject talking.

"Middle name!" he blurted with the last ounce of his faltering optimism for the topic. An inspired compromise in an attempt to avoid complete failure. "What's your middle name? Can't you just tell me your middle name?"

A middle name? She looked over his shoulder at the fish swimming and making faces at her, oblivious to her panicked thoughts, and almost smiled. She knows his. Knows it was his paternal grandfather's given name. She knows a lot of things about him. Knows that he has had only three relationships in his life. One in high school that ended when they left for different colleges, one with Jill over portions of his last two years at Stanford and some Bohemian club owner named Kayla a couple of years ago.

According to the 'known associates' files on both his and her behavior this last one was brief and casual - or, according to the interviewer's subtle questioning of Kayla herself, brief because it was casual and he wanted more than to be used as an ego boost or distraction. Exactly how she had used men in her own past. He had wanted it to be _meaningful_. Something she had no experience with.

And she knew other things about him too. Things not in his file. Things he has shared with her over the course of normal conversation. Nothing earth-shattering or worthy of mention in a government report but they were parts of him. Or things that made him who he is. Meaningful things. He shared those parts of himself with her freely and she absorbed them eagerly.

It's just a middle name. She's had as many of those as she has had first names - she has never answered to a middle name. She never thought she looked like a 'Madison' anyway, it and Sarah were just common names for a woman her age and she had later figured out Graham's clever joke of the two names reversed. But it's not Sarah Walker's middle name he wants to hear. That would just be another lie. Another piece of a made up persona.

He wants to hear a piece of the name that the smallest, most vulnerable version of her once wrote on green, three-lined handwriting paper in kindergarten. Something real. The name the original her learned before learning never to say it again. And just the middle one of the three. The one that means nothing without the context of the other two. It is the pinnacle of meaninglessness. Less than zero. He's lowered his expectations of her so low now that it burns in her chest and throat that she has so little to offer.

Screw it. He can have it all. The name she hasn't thought of in years. The one that represents the only real version of her that ever existed. Only two people in the world know it despite what Graham thinks he knows. She can tell him her real name. She trusts him. Maybe not absolutely. Maybe not with all her secrets. Maybe not his reactions to them. But the only way it could be tied to anything is if...

She could see him anticipating the words that are now stuck in her throat and the horrifying realization of what she almost did literally stunned her speechless as he slowly realizes she's going to just sit there gaping like the goldfish behind him.

"I'm gonna...go and get the napkins." He tried and failed to hide his dejection as he stood with slumped shoulders and walked to where he'd left the brown bag containing the napkins and, she is sure, her favorite soda and maybe some sort of dessert that she will split with him. _That_ she can share but not a piece of herself. She so wanted to salvage this moment but she was still frozen by what could have been a catastrophic mistake.

"It's Lisa." she finally managed to utter in a faint whisper, a mighty struggle to even form the sounds. "My middle name is Lisa." but she was almost certain that he was too far away when it finally does escape her mouth.

It's hers. It's all that she can offer.

And it's true.

And it's meaningless.

.

* * *

.

"So..." he returned with the napkins, a canned diet soda for each of them and a cheerful mask as he tried to recover from what he surely considered a disastrous attempt at getting to know her. God, she's made _him_ hide his true face from _her_. "...Carina came by my place. Before we brought the diamond to you."

"And FedExed it." This was easier. This clever banter with the most quick-witted person she had ever met. As long as the full firepower of his sarcasm wasn't aimed at her. Maybe she could find a way to share something of herself that wasn't damaging or embarrassing one day. But not today.

"Hey! I will have you know that they are very reliable. Especially when you spring for next day delivery." He opened the box between them, balancing it on his knees and extending the lid toward her, before separating two pieces for her that he placed on the open lid as he separated two for himself in the void left behind.

"And what language were you two speaking in to keep the baddies from knowing what you were about to do?"

"It was two different languages. Less common ones."

"Two less common languages? That's amazing! I picked up a little Spanish here and there but, how many _common_ languages do you speak?"

"That's classified." she smiled around a bite of pizza.

"Of course it is. But the point is," he continued around his own pizza shaking off for now the fact that this woman spoke multiple foreign languages "that, when she came to my place, Carina was wearing the most _interesting_ outfit."

_Son-of-a-bitch_ she thought, envisioning a trench coat and little else as he chewed his pizza before clarifying.

"All black. Kinda form fitting. So tell me..." and he leaned in close with a serious expression "...where _do_ gorgeous mysterious spies get their ninja outfits?"

She swallowed her own bite of pizza. "She was wearing a shinobi shōzoku?"

"Is Japanese one of them? The languages you speak?"

"Maybe." she grinned.

"Riiiight. Well," maybe this was how it was going to be. Her offering poorly disguised vague responses to a game of twenty-thousand questions. If that's what made her less uncomfortable about it he was willing to play along. "...it wasn't a shinobi whatsit..."

"Shōzoku."

"Gesundheit," and he smiled at her rolling her eyes at his juvenile joke. "Wasn't one of those. Not exactly. And I would have said ninja pajamas so lets pause for a moment and fully appreciate how hot it was that you called it that."

He took another bite of pizza, leaned back, looked up when he finished and sighed deeply. He was letting her off the hook and she hadn't even noticed when his mask had fallen and returned to his usual joyful face just that the glorious light in his eyes and smile had returned. He realized he had overstepped - though he didn't know why - couldn't know the extent of her fear - and he was trying to distract her from that fact as much as himself. He continued to look up dreamily until she lightly smacked him in the chest.

Chuck flinched dramatically "Ow! You're supposed to protect me, you know?"

"I was. The longer you made that face the harder I was going to have to hit you." She took another bite of pizza, muttering around it "Especially if any of that dreamy look was over what Carina was wearing."

"I see. Interesting reasoning. But I wasn't talking about Carina. She was all in black but wasn't wearing a shinobi sudoku."

This time Sarah ignored the deliberate mispronunciation. "You said 'gorgeous mysterious spies in ninja outfits'. You have to admit, she's gorgeous."

Chuck polished off his first piece of pizza before responding. "If the question were posed, I guess I would. Anyone who isn't just blatantly lying and wouldn't admit that either has bad eyesight or very poor taste. And she is mysterious I suppose, in a totally terrifying kind of way." Sarah couldn't help but smile at the tiny shudder Chuck put on for show.

"But I was actually talking about another uninvited visitor to my apartment. The night after you and I first met." Chuck pursed his lips in a knowing pout and Sarah barely prevented her jaw from dropping open as she recovered from his veiled accusation.

"Whatever do you mean?" she asked innocently and just as dramatically with comically batted eyelashes.

"There was a lot going on that night. You and Casey and his team... I sort of assumed it was one of his guys or a third gunman from another alphabet soup agency that you guys called off. Who knows? You are pretty tall. But honestly, with all the weirdness since I didn't think about it until today."

"Because?"

"Carina. All in black. She's very tall too. And very... nimble." this time he anticipated and dodged her half-hearted smack to the chest. "I'm just saying, it reminded me of how my 'intruder'..." and God love him if he didn't actually do the bunny ears with the hand not holding a half-eaten piece of pizza "...moved. And, forgive me, but that particular outfit isn't your most flattering. I kinda assumed you were a he. Sorry."

"Don't be." she smiled. There he goes apologizing when she's far more at fault again. "Padding. It's _meant_ to seem like I'm a guy."

"Another layer to the disguise, huh?"

"Something like that. And _I'm_ sorry."

"For?"

_For hiding behind so many layers of masks. So much armor. But honestly Chuck, you don't really want to see what's underneath it all._

"For hitting you with all that stuff Morgan was flinging around."

"Ahh. Yeah, that was pretty slick. You're too good for that to have just been a bunch of lucky - or unlucky - shots. You were angry."

"Maybe a little. I thought you were a traitor playing at being this sweet, thoughtful guy. But you're hard to stay mad at."

"Well, _that's_ a good thing. And I'd hate to see 'a lot' of angry. Now I have my very own kick ass ninja spy girl protecting me, I'll have to be careful not to let it go to my head. Although I _have_ started stealing your moves."

At Sarah's quizzical look he continued, "Clunked Carina in the head with the patented Sarah Walker plate toss."

"You did not!"

"Yeah. Well, I mean mine was just halfway across the living room and yours was across a pool. I don't know how you did that without the wind catching it. You'd have to put some serious force into..."

"You're lucky she didn't kick your ass." Sarah interrupted Chuck's scientific analysis of dinnerware aerodynamics.

"Well, I think she likes me." Chuck said before scrambling to correct any potential misinterpretations. "Not likes me likes me, like thinks I'm..."

"I get it." and she did. But the fact that Carina seemed to like him - not 'like him-like him', she hoped - was more unusual than he could possibly know.

"Besides, she'd have to go through you." It was a statement, not a question as he wiped his hands and moved to stand.

"Yeah. She would." Sarah acknowledged softly as she followed Chuck to the door. When he turned while opening the door he had a soft smile on his face and paused to set a few things straight.

"Sarah? I'm glad you're here. Glad to have you. Have you protecting me, I mean. And I really meant it when I apologized for getting bent out of shape about you and Bryce. I don't have any right to criticize you for anything like that. Or anything else really. I, umm... I understand wanting to keep things secret. That that's what you do. It's part of your job, I just... that's all I understand about any of it. About the life you've led. And I just wish I knew more about the world you're protecting me from. Now that I'm in it. So, if you ever do wanna talk to someone about - whatever - I already have a lot of secrets up here," and he gestured vaguely to his head before offering "I can keep yours too."

He let the offer hang in the air between them knowing it wasn't something she would leap at or even accept anytime soon. He had put a few things together since his petulant fit over Bryce and realized she likely had no one to truly confide in. If the people in her profession were as guarded as Carina - who was surprisingly _brutally_ honest about everything except her own motivations - had said then she was well practiced at internalizing. In keeping people at arms length. Probably hadn't had any deep or meaningful relationships in a long time and maybe even didn't have that with Bryce. He honestly couldn't fathom what awful things she had lived through or what things she might have had to do to do so. He was only glad that she had lived through it all and that he had met her.

He knew he had pushed a little too hard but she was simply fascinating. He desperately wanted to know what circumstances had shaped such an amazing person. What manner of alchemy - performed in what manner of crucible - could possibly result in a woman as strong, clever and formidable as Sarah Walker out of raw material that was still so clearly delicate and sensitive as the woman he occasionally caught a glimpse of through nearly imperceptible gaps in her armor?

He had known he was close to breaking her resolve but he also perceived that - whatever her reservations - the struggle within her was literally hurting her. He didn't want to pressure her into revealing something she didn't want to reveal. Especially as he had caught at least the shape of a word she had barely uttered as he walked away and was relatively certain that she _had_ shared a piece of herself. That was more significant to him than if he had actually heard the short, two-syllable name correctly. And before he left to consider what all this meant, he had one last bit of pettiness from their earlier mission to apologize for.

"And, umm... Sarah? You looked amazing at that party."

"Thank you." she almost whispered as she leaned against the doorjamb looking up at him with that impossibly beautiful expression that was far more than the sum of her indisputably beautiful features.

He was lingering in the doorway, leaning with one hand against the same doorjamb, almost at the top. Sarah took advantage of the fact that a fellow resident of her floor was opening his door across the hall and two doors down to rise up on her toes in her bare feet and softly kiss Chuck on the cheek.

"Goodnight, Chuck."

"G'Night... Sarah."

Her real name didn't matter. She was Sarah to him and always would be.

She watched with her shoulder against the doorframe and fingertips in her back pockets as he walked down the hallway and turned toward the elevators.

.

* * *

.

They had been as polite as any two people could be to each other when one just wanted a sign that what he felt wasn't completely one sided from someone who didn't dare encourage such thoughts. And Chuck had lightened the mood by just being Chuck. He was trying to make up for prying - for something as fundamentally _him_ as his inquisitive nature - for wanting to _know_ her - thinking she was angry about it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

She knew he appreciated her ability to protect him. He had no problem with the anti-stereotypical nature of their relationship and that itself challenged every notion she ever held about men in general. But this desire to learn more about her made her feel valued for more than what she was able to do for him.

And for less. For some non-existent version of her that was more normal. More relatable. He seemed to care about her as a person. For simply who she was underneath all of the training and covers and criminal history. For someone even she didn't know. She tried not to read too much into it. He treated everyone that way.

If she were angry at anything it was at the situation. At her inability to be honest with him about how special she thought he was. At being torn between wanting to know more about him as well and fearing it. Fearing that she would eventually be disappointed - which she actually considered unlikely - or, more likely, grow even more attached.

When she resumed her seat on the bed she saw the lens of the camcorder staring back at her, did a quick mental count of the days past since that morning on the beach when her current assignment began and reached over to press the 'record' button.

"Day 21: Chuck came over to my hotel room today and brought me a pizza. Vegetarian, no olives. I think he's making it his mission to get to know me. It's sweet..."

She smiled at the memory but was at a loss for what else to say so she stopped the recording. It was more than sweet. He noticed something about her that she never complained about but always irritated her. She was certain that Bryce had no idea what she did and didn't like on her pizza but she must have picked off hundreds of them in his presence. Ever since she and her Dad had to go to a picked-over food bank one winter and somehow ended up with four large jars of them and had little choice but to include them in every one of their meals for three weeks she couldn't stand them in any form.

She would have told him her middle name. It was literally the least she could do. Or she had thought so at the time. As it turns out the _actual_ least she could do was sit there like a lump and stare blankly at him. He had misinterpreted her hesitation and walked away.

For the first time ever, she had actually considered telling someone her entire real name. She _wanted_ him to know who she really was. Or at least once was - the name of the girl she started as before she became what she now is. And then she realized one utterly horrifying fact that should never _not_ be at the front of her mind.

He was the Intersect.

As much as she despised when her superiors dehumanized him by calling him that rather than by his name, she had seen what happened when he flashed on someone. One peek at Carina and he knew she was DEA and had recently been on a highly classified mission in Argentina. He had already flashed on a piece of her when Casey told him about Elena Truffaut with disastrous results. It seemed that was all he knew and she had been careful her whole career to disassociate identities so that her actions as one persona could not be tied to another. But what if her real name was the thread that tied everything together?

He might flash on everything about her. All her sins laid bare. All the people she had killed. The numerous men and rare woman or two she had seduced to defensible but varying degrees. The version of her who had, at one time, abandoned humanity entirely and didn't care who she hurt. The version who foolishly tried to reclaim some of that humanity by seeking comfort in the arms of strangers and a partner who seemed like something more for a time. All the lies and ruined lives left in her wake. She didn't think she could bear to see the look on his face if she told him who she started as and ever had to truly face the monster she had become reflected in his eyes.

She didn't know what compelled her to press 'record' again. Or why she paused for several seconds looking to the side before gazing into the camera and continuing her entry.

"He wanted to know my name." she restarted hesitantly. "Or anything about the real me, really - whatever that means anymore - but I got hung up on the name. It's probably in his head somewhere but he doesn't want to just _know_ it, he wants me to tell him. To trust him enough to tell him. And I wanted to tell him. It's such a little thing. The name of a girl who doesn't exist anymore. But he's the...he has his abilities. And who knows what he could tie that name to and what that next revelation might lead him to. It...it could seriously affect his willingness to follow my instructions if he starts to think of me as more of a handler than a friend."

Sarah shut off the recording again and sighed. She almost called him the Intersect on a recording and at the end she couldn't even be honest to herself in a recording not intended for Graham's review, falling back on the twisted platitudes of her spy-self. She had tried to turn her commentary back to the mission but had stumbled upon a surprising truth. She had suddenly realized that she _wanted_ him to consider her a friend - to realize that she wasn't here just because the government wanted a set of eyes on him at all times.

She wanted to be that 'great girl'. The one that he saw her as. But even if that were possible, it was a Catch 22. He didn't see himself as worthy of such a woman. Not that it could ever be her for so many reasons. But even if it couldn't possibly be her she wondered what she could do to remedy this perception that he is somehow not worthy of someone he sees that way.

And it would be nice if he at least thought of her as a friend. As a person he could trust. Even Carina wasn't firmly in that category even if Sarah did trust her to have her back in a life or death situation. The jet-ski trick had proven that. Yet Carina had probably been more honest with Chuck than she had been.

Now she had John Casey watching her back. Even as they had been fleeing Alahi's compound he had thought to retrieve her bag from their 'borrowed' limo. As she yelled at Chuck and then Carina over the phone while she changed in the backseat of their other borrowed vehicle he covered for her by locating Carina and the diamond with his NSA phone trace magic tricks. Even if Carina did later get the upper hand on him. Again. She was still so mad at the time that she had just rolled her eyes when she heard Casey bark at Chuck "Eyes up front, soldier." thinking he hadn't even noticed her at the party.

But then he had just admitted that he did notice her at the party. She would never admit it but Carina was right about her motivations for her choice of dress. And Casey had tipped her off to Chuck's inability to refrain from peeking as she changed. And before she returned to the tedium of the mission report that contained none of those details or interpretations, Sarah smiled at something Chuck had said during his visit that she hadn't fully processed until just now.

'_...gorgeous mysterious spies in ninja outfits..._'

He was talking about her.

.

* * *

040: Semi-Precious Things

* * *

_._

_I carry my crucifix, under my death list_

_Forward my mail to me in hell_

_Liars and the martyrs, lost faith in The Father_

_Long lost in the wishing well_

\- Mötley Crüe, Wild Side

.

* * *

.

Carina had been sitting in the lobby facing the elevators with freshly dyed caramel brown hair, oversized sunglasses and a magazine obscuring her face. She needn't have bothered as Chuck was lost in his own thoughts, hands in pockets and eyes slightly downcast but sporting a small goofy smile as he walked past. She smiled brightly as she watched Chuck leave. The fact that he was welcome in Sarah's residence was huge. She doubted he realized just how huge. Maybe they'd graduate to sleepovers sooner than she had been expecting.

Her eyes followed him as he passed by the windows toward where he had parked that ridiculous little car and, once she was confident that he was gone, she headed toward the elevators, stepped inside and pressed the button for Sarah's floor. On the way up she was struck by sudden inspiration and pressed the button above the illuminated one. Symmetry demanded that she leave in a way similar to how she arrived. After letting the elevator doors open and close she stepped out on the next floor, walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door of the room directly above Sarah's.

When there was no answer she slipped a key card on a ribbon cable into the lock, it's haphazard rainbow of wires connected to a small device in her hand. She pressed a button on the side of the device, waited a few seconds and heard the lock click as its indicator light turned green.

Carina closed the door behind her, quickly verified that she was alone in the room and went out to the balcony, closing the door behind her. She removed her shoes and placed them inside her purse, unfastened one end of her purse strap and held the free end of the strap as she swung the bag unto the balcony below. She was unconcerned about the noise - she was relatively sure that she was expected.

She lowered herself over the rail, shimmied down as low as she could gripping the iron spindles, transitioned over to a drain pipe only to immediately push back and drop the remaining two feet to land in a crouch with the arches of both feet on the rail of Sarah's balcony with no thought to what could have happened had she missed or slipped or not pushed off hard enough to close the gap.

She cheated her balance toward the balcony itself to drop down like a cat and collect her purse and retrieve her shoes. She had also removed a small slim-Jim from a hidden sleeve in the bottom of her handbag - one she had already used once before to pop the lock on the sliding glass door - before she even noticed that the door was already open.

Sarah was sitting on her couch in the main room with her laptop on her lap looking the exact opposite of surprised to see Carina. "I thought he'd never leave," Carina quipped as she strolled from the sitting room to the front bedroom of the hotel suite.

Sarah smiled at her second unexpected but not unwelcome guest of the evening until she assessed the newcomer's clothing and lack of harness. Sarah stood, went into the sitting room, stepped over to the sliding glass doors and looked up. She turned on Carina "You did that without any gear? You could have been killed!"

Carina just shrugged and prowled around the room pausing to smile at the fish in his bowl. She ran an index finger around the rim, pleased to see it restored to order from her first visit. To see the fish contentedly swimming laps around his perfectly safe, if uninteresting, universe. "My bosses are pissed about the diamond even though it was recovered. I've been lining up this other deep cover assignment for a few months and thought I'd have a week or so off but they want me to get right on it. When I leave here, I'll be Sylvia Marcos and tomorrow I'll be in Greece. I wanted to talk to you before I go."

"I'm sorry, D. I didn't think they would be so petty about it."

"You of all people shouldn't be so surprised but don't sweat it. I'm not. They would have just found some other excuse. You know they've got me by the balls. I still owe a bunch of payments for putting me back together again. I'm off to get cozy with some shipping magnate's son." Sarah's reaction to that led her to elaborate. "It's not as horrific as it could be. It's not like before, they give me pretty free reign on how things get done. He's cute...and not the complete bastard his daddy is apparently."

"Let me guess, you need the intel on the father but the son is an easier in? You know how that type of thing usually goes. Especially if junior isn't in the habit of standing up to dad."

"Maybe. Maybe I'll make a man out of him and he'll stand up for himself. Then we can make him an asset and work all their contacts down to the bone. Or he's already involved and I'll burn him down. Anyway, better me than you." Sarah felt a sudden swell of affection when she realized that Carina meant that when she said it - that she would rather walk into the lion's den than send Sarah in her place. "And you are officially my favorite person because you have pizza!"

Carina moved to the table near the window which held the pizza box and took off her jacket, draping it over the back of one of the chairs. Sarah was reminded of just how ruined a person would have to be to slip so easily from discussion of a potentially vile undercover mission to delight over a slice of pizza when she got a better look at the other agent's jewelry as Carina helped herself to the leftovers.

She was wearing the necklace.

She never wore it while on a mission but it never left her possession even years ago when half of the settings were empty. Especially then.

It was strangely beautiful but to Sarah it was as ugly as Carina had intended it to be. As ugly as the story it told - something they had not shared with the rest of the CATs or anyone else. It wasn't Sarah's tale to tell.

Conceived and created on a whim, Sarah had been there when she gave the jeweler in Barcelona the very specific instructions for what she wanted. Overcoming both Sarah's objections and those of the jeweler at repurposing her crucifix to form its center. Carina had wanted it crudely done for her own reasons and he had left the heirloom discernible for what it once was in protest. Twisted, stretched and mangled into a vertically-narrow X it now formed the center of the piece. The only way Sarah ever knew she regretted it was when she later had a picture of that exact same crucifix, as it once appeared, tattooed on her left forearm. A no-no among undercover agents that she usually managed to keep strategically hidden by posture alone.

Sarah also remembered the jeweler's disappointment at being told that half of the settings would remain unfilled. For now.

Everyone who was remotely involved in the events of that day had been a dead man walking and a stone was promised to each empty setting - one for each already forfeited life - each stone arranged along the perimeter of a roughly U-shaped spiderweb made from chains of gold meeting in the center at what used to be a crucifix. A web it's owner liked to describe as inescapable. She overpaid the jeweler in cash and a promise was made to return to fill each setting at the appropriate time. She left with eleven stones set and ten left vacant and made four return trips to that jeweler over the ensuing years. A promise kept.

Opals were the gifts she could not give to herself for one reason or another. She had thought it was clever when she requested the first two - for the two men killed in the raid that rescued her too late - be placed in the first and last of the six settings on the portion of the necklace around her neck. But Sarah had again been present when she utterly trashed a hotel room in Stuttgart after learning that one of her targets had been killed while working a freelance job and another opal would be necessary.

There were a total of five opals now, the three that came after the first two were scattered about the web in the order of their corresponding victim's demise. They were mostly white with a rainbow of amorphous patterns that glinted on their surface, predominantly purples and greens complementing the other stones. Sarah was surprised there were so few opals. Carina had been equally angry when she discovered the need for each of the remaining two. They all got off easy.

Carina chose Alexandrite for her friend's gifts to her, thinking pearls would not stand out enough from the opals. The first four completed the settings around the neckline flanked by the first two opals. All four in a continuous line just as they had once knelt before a vengeful prior incarnation of Sarah with their hands bound behind their backs. Combined the six were the beginning of the story.

Four more had been added over the years between missions - while on missions - whenever serendipity led to crossed paths between Sarah's many faces and her prey. The first in Antwerp and three more thereafter. Though not present to handle them as she saw fit, Carina was relatively sure none of them had gotten off easy when they next met the most creatively lethal person Carina had ever known. After being chastised for the quick work she had made of the first four when she finished off Carina's first, Sarah made sure the next four suffered in proportion to their involvement.

Seven amethysts for the gifts Carina had given herself - including the first one deliberately executed after the two women were reunited - and they nearly completed the web. Sarah had been present for three of them but there was no thought of shared attribution. The one they broke out of Gitmo with a fake transfer was tricky and Sarah was relatively certain Graham had an invisible hand in that one with unknowable motives though likely to continue feeding both of the beasts he had created. Carina was absolutely certain those she had handled herself had gotten exactly what they deserved. The weaselly man who had been her primary torturer, and the likely source of her permanent injury, had been kept alive for three days, not a moment of which was free from pain.

And finally, a solitary empty setting deliberately left unfilled. The setting at the bottom had been one of only two unfilled setting as recently as eight months ago. The tip of the web fell just shy of the point directly between her breasts. The empty setting was the one just left of center above the newly-added amethyst at the bottom. Directly over her heart by pure coincidence. She still looked in on him from time to time, as she had promised, but she was not entirely without mercy. Sarah had been present for that promise as well but now realized for the first time that as long as that setting remained unfilled - between herself, Carina and circumstance - she was the most prolific contributor to her friend's macabre shrine to revenge.

Now that her masterpiece was complete Sarah saw no need to mention the setting that had never been included at all much less filled. She still felt irrational guilt that the chaos of the universe had allowed those particular paths to cross on that particular day. That same guilt had prevented her from telling her friend about the missing piece of the puzzle and with each stone that was set she had an equally irrational hope that it would bring her friend some kind of peace. Maybe it was as much her story as it was Carina's and the unknown twenty second stone meant that her lead was unassailable.

But then she had always been the more accomplished killer.

"Help yourself," Sarah said to Carina as she stepped into the bathroom for a drink of water and looked at herself in the mirror considering her part of the story.

Pakistan. It was the first time she actually _enjoyed_ killing someone. Until she realized that the first incarnation she had known of the woman now calling herself Carina was dying just yards away. _Had_ briefly died in the literal sense; and more permanently in the figurative. And would live on, reborn as a killer. Like her.

At the time she had not only enjoyed putting that bullet through his throat and brain but had actually experienced a sadistic wish that she could have hurt him more before he died. For the first time but certainly not the last she had transformed into a demonic version of herself existing only to inflict pain and grant the release of death.

And she had gone straight from there to a botched infiltration mission in Romania with a smarmy mark who had reminded her so much of Peterson that her transition to a solution of extreme violence had felt natural. Refreshing. Welcoming, even. Like the devil himself had smiled at her as she accepted her true self. And, as she felt a sense of some semblance of control over her own life for the first time, she had smiled back.

Pakistan had been the beginning of the end of any pretending that she would ever be considered a good person. Dani Lassiter wasn't the only person who died that day. Rachel Edwards had executed four captives and that had probably been enough to send her down her bloody path. But then the man responsible for everything that happened that day had gloated over her barely conscious body.

She had blown his head off and somehow he still managed to win.

.

* * *

.

Sarah resumed her seat as Carina looked out the window and down at what could have been the distance of her fall before continuing to explore the room while eating the last piece of pizza. Jesus, the woman could eat. Based on her build people assumed she ate like a bird but Sarah knew her internal injuries resulted in borderline nutrition issues that occasionally required supplements. That just negated the effects of her counterintuitive eating habits that weren't directly caused by the physical problems. But if nothing changed, Carina would be hungry for the rest of her life.

Carina stopped at the dresser opposite the bed smiling when she spotted the camera there, licking the grease from her fingers. "You and Chuckles making some home movie magic? Kinky."

"I told you. There's nothing going on between us."

"Well, I don't think that's entirely true. But don't worry. I only got to second base with him."

"What?!"

"Ree-lax." Carina laughed as she plopped down on the couch next to Sarah, crossed her ankles and stretched her arms overhead briefly arching her back at the same time. She didn't want to worry Sarah but she thought she might have tweaked her shoulder a little while dangling from the balcony above but it seemed OK now.

"To beat the analogy to death, he was standing in the batter's box looking - _reluctantly_ \- down the first base line. I was rounding third for home. By myself. After he left." Carina winked and smiled at her friend at that last part.

"Eww...gross. I don't wanna know that." but then Sarah couldn't help but smile at Carina's faux pout, likely false innuendo and what she assumed passed for an apology for trying to seduce Chuck.

"Let's just average it and call it second base, please? My ego is bruised." She was a little surprised when Carina asked with a sigh "What is it about him anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Sarah felt a brief and inexplicable pang of jealousy thinking that maybe Carina's seduction attempts weren't as half-hearted as they seemed. That maybe Carina could see what she herself saw in Chuck.

"He fucking Fed-Exed a diamond worth millions of dollars for starters."

"Well, they're very reliable."

"He also stuck up for you when I tried to explain to him what most of the analysts don't get about us field agents."

"Carina...what did you say besides the Bryce thing?"

"Why's he so spun up about you and Bryce anyway? He knows you're not a virgin, right?"

"It's not like that. Chuck knew Bryce from before. They have history."

"Small f'n world. Who doesn't with that guy?"

"Seriously, Carina What else did you say?"

"The truth. Educational information only. The espionage after-school special. Just about spies like us... that we're wired differently... that we're all in it for ourselves... how we slide from identity to identity... that we don't want people to know anything real about us... to get to know us because we might have leave 'em or kill 'em... Did I step in it?"

Sarah realized her face had fallen at each entirely true statement Carina had repeated. She couldn't begrudge her telling Chuck the truth about people like them. She just wished there was a softer way to explain it all. A way that didn't portray her as a complete lunatic. "Maybe a little. He's learning."

"Yeah, he said that too. But he kinda thinks you hung the moon. You sure you haven't given him a little taste? I mean you're great and all but he'd have to be pretty special to put two and two together on girls like us and not run for the hills."

Sarah smiled at that and replied cryptically, "Well, he is kinda special."

"Cute too. Where can I get one?"

"Thought you'd just try to take this one again."

"Nah. I did that when you left us together in that courtyard and he passed the test."

Sarah leaned forward at that. "What'd he say?"

Carina resisted the urge to laugh at Sarah's eagerness, keeping it to a small, knowing smile "That he was flattered but no."

"Good answer." Sarah smiled.

"I know, right? Is that so hard really?"

"Well, he did agree that you're gorgeous."

"Another good answer. If obvious."

"So, D. Why _did_ you call him to your hotel room? I asked you not to play the game. I mean, it's OK in a club or something. I don't care about those guys. But this is an ongoing op, I wouldn't have asked you not to without a good reason."

_And that reason was_ not _operational_, thought Carina. "No, you _told_ me not to play. Big difference. But he's the one who knew things he shouldn't know. You know operational issues trump personal issues. I had to know his angle."

"And that's all it was?"

Carina thought back to peeking through that window. Seeing Sarah looking up adoringly at Chuck. Seeing the other couple so clearly in love. It was stupid. If only she had been able to let go of her hate and be someone better. But that ship had sailed long ago and she tried to make sense of what she had been feeling. "I guess I got a little mad. And a little curious. I mean I come to you to bring you glad tidings and a lovely, honest-to-God diamond heist to get your mind off Bryce as soon as I could after Graham told me and you've got this new guy and cozy family game nights and it was so obvious you guys were lying to me...

"Oh my god," Sarah interrupted as she identified the unfamiliar emotion from the other agent "You were jealous!"

They had played the 'who's hotter' game in bars and clubs all over the world, usually when neither was really looking for more than a fun evening of dancing. It was stupid really. Neither really wanted a guy who was interested in the other, especially when they both knew that, at most, nothing more than a night's companionship was at stake. And usually not even that because they only played when neither of them cared about losing. Since they only played when a guy seemed to be showing real interest as more than a one-night stand no guy ever really 'won'.

If he was interested enough to not be distracted by the other he would probably be disappointed when he learned that she was leaving town tomorrow and nothing more than dancing was on the menu. Or maybe a little heavy petting in the darker corners of the club. Occasionally, or more than occasionally for Carina, a brief encounter and a disappearance from his bed while he slept with no way to contact her.

And if he did allow himself to be distracted he was definitely going home alone. If he was stupid enough to suggest he was man enough for both of them he would wake up behind the dumpsters sometime tomorrow without his pants or shoes.

But they had a code for when either didn't want to play. And neither had ever been jealous of anything which was why Carina's face was currently turning red with embarrassment. Something Sarah thought impossible.

"You did just sort of say you _do_ care about this one and there's clearly something between you two...save it!" Carina held up a hand to silence the pointless objection Sarah's mouth was starting to form. "I know what I saw. And I knew you wouldn't tell him I had been in Argentina so when he knew that...and can we talk about why this guy has a clearance higher than yours..."

"You're deflecting. What happened?"

Carina wasn't quite ready to share so she stood and looked around the room a bit more. "Do you know what's missing from this picture?"

At that she knelt down and reached under the bed skirt, first retrieving a kettle bell and a couple of other pieces of workout equipment. "Something wrong with the gym downstairs?"

"Yeah. It's not open early enough. And there's a creepy guy who's always there when they do open. What are you digging for?"

Carina had lowered herself to peek under the bed skirt. "Ah-ha! Evidence of your library habit but you're slipping. Just two?" and Carina held up two books reading the title of the first aloud. "_The Languages of the Former Soviet Republics: Their History and Development_, really? Your recreational reading always did need some work. And..."

She turned the second book right side up to read its title "OK, now this is interesting. _Gen X TV: 'The Brady Bunch' to 'Melrose Place'_. What the fuck, C?"

Sarah tried hard not to blush, replying simply "Research."

"OK, so explain to me why your research piles and recreational reading piles - not that they're the usual piles - are so backward."

"I haven't had as much time for reading lately. But Chuck and his friends were basically raised by television. I don't know what they're talking about half the time."

"Dummy. Just tell him that. He'll hook you up with a list so fast. Or better yet, tell him you want to watch some stuff he likes with him. Gotta be better than that stupid penguin movie. You can share some popcorn and some quality couch time. Honestly, C. I have never seen you research a guy's interests unless you were working him. _Are_ you working him?

"No! God, no. But sometimes I think he thinks I am. And I can't come right out and say anything."

"Alright, so what's the story? The real story. As much as you can tell me. I get that he's smart..."

"No, I'm smart. You're smart...usually. Calling him smart is insulting."

"So that's why Uncle Sam wants him. Why do you want him?"

"He's sweet. And kind."

"And cute," Carina interjected.

"And cute," Sarah agreed. "He just cares about people." it didn't escape Carina's notice at all that Sarah hadn't bothered to refute that she wanted him but the victory wasn't worth celebrating.

"Cares about _you_."

"Cares about everyone. Even people he has every right to expect will disappoint him."

"What about you?"

"What _about_ me?"

"Are you going to disappoint him?" Carina asked pointedly.

Sarah considered the possible outcomes for a moment before responding "Definitely." Carina's foot shot out and she kicked Sarah hard in the shin. "OW! Fuck!"

"Stop it. No one gets to talk about you like that. You're amazing. I know it. He knows it. I can tell. Why can't you see it?"

"Why do you care anyway?" Sarah snapped as she rubbed her shin where she had been kicked.

"Cause you're better than me. If there's no hope for you..."

"I'm not better than you."

"Yeah, you are. You still have all of the parts you were born with for one thing. And you handled it all a lot better than I did. I was on the edge of burned out when we first met and you even taught me how to cope when we started working together afterward. And I know some of what you went through while I was recuperating. You don't talk about it but I hear things. I can guess how bad it was for a while. That's why I always tried to get you out to have some fun and tried to shoo away guys I thought were bad for you unless you gave me the signal."

"You went though a lot worse than I did." Sarah offered, not wanting to admit that the coping mechanisms she had provided - detachment and lies - may not have been the most constructive even if they had kept her friend alive. She hadn't even considered that Carina had a reason for pushing her to get out and do social things. It may not have been the most constructive or healthy approach either but it had made her feel like less of a pariah for a while even if most of those interactions were empty by design.

"Its not apples to apples." Sarah said, as much about the things each had been through as the unconventional aid each tried to lend to the other.

"No, but I know how it tears you up. I've seen your moods and seen you after your nightmares. But if we're going to compare scars I guess we both have some pretty impressive ones. Not that they even left those visible for anyone but us. Sometimes I wish people could just read it all on my face and my body. See how much of me is missing. I feel like a chalk outline of myself."

"Where's all this coming from?" Sarah didn't want to admit that she had just been thinking something similar. About Chuck, of course. If he could see the real her would he still look at her as though she were special?

"I don't know. I'm probably full of shit or trying to trick you into something that will amuse me. Maybe I feel like I'm getting old and don't want to be alone forever. Pick one." If her friend was even contemplating the idea of 'forever' Sarah considered it progress.

Carina sighed and continued. "Chuck knew about Argentina, and he mentioned Pakistan to kick me in the ass. What does he know about it?"

"He's sweet but he's also incredibly naïve about some things. I tell him a mission went bad and he thinks it was just a jail break or something. Or if he thinks worse things he doesn't let on. And he doesn't have the best poker face so I would know. Pakistan isn't something he pulled from intel, I let it slip when he asked about you. I'm sorry, it's not my story to tell. It's just front of mind when it comes to you. I caught myself before I said anything more than the name of a country. I just told him that something went wrong and I had to save your ass. I noticed you filled the last setting... You said 'glad tidings' earlier. You found him?

Carina's hand moved to the tip of her necklace, as it once had to her crucifix.

"Yeah. It's over."

"When?"

"A few weeks ago. A little side trip back to Bolivia, if you can believe that. But it wasn't... Do you remember that story about the politician and the Pope you told me? From the Middle Ages? What'd ya call it?"

Sarah had to think for a moment about that particular drunken conversation and replay a bit in her mind before she recalled the topic. "Anticipatory absolution. Forgiveness of a sin before it's even committed."

"You are without a doubt my phone-a-friend lifeline." At Sarah's quizzical response she clarified "My go-to person for obscure facts."

"It's my gift. I remember everything."

"Well, _I_ remember one time - before Pakistan - I asked you if you thought I could ever be forgiven for all the things I've done. And then that whole shit storm happened. And you put yourself out there like a fucking worm on a hook just to find me. And our pal Graham made me a deal. Put me back together. Train me up some more. Make me a hunter like you. And if I found them, he would make sure people looked the other way."

_Ah, so Graham had lent a hand_ thought Sarah. Probably more than she had originally suspected. And Sarah did remember that conversation before Pakistan. When she herself had nowhere near the amount of blood on her own hands as she did now. "I don't follow why that made you think about the pope thing."

"When I asked before Pakistan if I could be forgiven, that was for doing things I had to do to survive. Now, I've been running on pure hate for four years. God help anyone who got in my way. But this time I knew exactly what I was doing. I did things I swore I would never do again just to get intel on guys. Hunted them down. Did horrible, horrible things to them. Made them beg for me to kill them like I begged that terrified kid, Bilal, that they kicked around. And I just _knew_ I would feel better when I was done. At peace. All the hate's dried up and I don't feel any better. Just so, so tired. And I don't really feel like I can possibly be forgiven for those things because I knew _exactly_ what I was doing the entire time."

"So, that's what you meant when you said glad tidings. You wanted to talk to me about it. You don't need my absolution, Carina. Or anyone else's. Those men deserved to die. You're talking about absolution and the problem with that Pope's story is what they did didn't allow for any repentance, just tried to sweep it all away. And anyway it's not like you've had a lot of time to process..."

"But I have." Carina interrupted. "I _killed_ him a few weeks ago. It's not like he didn't know I was coming for him. All his buddies were gone and we didn't exactly do that quietly. I actually made it quick this time once he admitted he knew who I was. No remorse. Just acceptance. That was a few weeks ago. But I _found_ him six _months_ ago. And I've been thinking all that time that when I finally did kill him, because I was never not going to, when I finally got them all, what then? What did I become in order to find them all? And would I change any of it? Was I repentant?"

"And?" Sarah asked although she already knew the answer.

"I'm not. Not really. I wish it was all different but its not. And I'd do it all again, except maybe talking the DEA into rushing the mission in the first place. Everything else I regret but I wouldn't change. I'm still just as fucked up inside but now I don't have anything to distract me from the fact that I'm always going to be that way. I'm not a righteous spirit of vengeance, just...What _am_ I?"

"You're like me. Told you I wasn't better than you. The hole never gets _less_ deep. Not that I regret most of the things I've done either. I wish it had been different too. Wish it hadn't been me to do those things. But they had to be done." Sarah though for a moment about anticipatory absolution. She had been told her targets were bad people who deserved what she was about to do to them. Wasn't that the same thing? Justifying it in advance so she would see it through? "We cope the best we can, no matter how much we regret what we've done, or even regret the things we've done to cope. I've been thinking a little about how Chuck reacted over Bryce..."

"Yeah, clear that up for me because that was kinda shitty of him to throw that in your face."

"He didn't throw it in my face. Not really. I kinda threw it in his. By lying about it. Honestly, I don't think he is capable of hating anyone so I really don't think it was about me and Bryce. Chuck didn't _like_ that but I think it was about the lie. And then this whole idea that he thinks Bryce was my boyfriend. Like we lived together or something when we really just kinda orbited each other and I kept making the same choices every time we ran a mission together because it was comfortable or something. And easy because I knew we'd both move on to separate missions. And maybe we'd see each other again, maybe we wouldn't. So it wasn't really any different than any other hook up. But I don't think that's a very endearing way to describe it either. At least it wasn't just a guy we met after a mission knowing the team or just me was about to be deployed somewhere. I may as well call _them_ boyfriends."

"So we were a little wild." At a stern look from Sarah, Carina amended "OK, I was a lot wild. But you weren't that bad."

"You just said you were the one encouraging me to hook up with guys and then doing all you could to block them."

Carina sat back and sighed heavily. "I know. I wanted you and the girls to be as bad as me so I could pretend it was no big deal and then I didn't want anyone hooking up with you who wasn't good enough for you. I know it's fucked up."

"I didn't care most of the time. And you backed off when I said so. I just don't want to pretend that that's any way to be. For either of us. I don't really regret any of it, I guess, but I don't want to hook up with just anyone anymore."

"You mean you don't want to be judged."

"I guess so. But mostly I don't want to be judged by me."

"And maybe be able to entertain the idea of something real?" When Sarah just looked down at her hands and let that slide Carina realized Sarah hadn't really realized that was what at least part of this was about so she leaned in and pressed the issue.

"OK, so I know there's _nothing_ going on between the two of you but I seriously doubt Chuck is going to ask what your number is. You're beautiful. You're not a nun. You live in a tenuous, uncertain, adrenaline fueled world. He knows about Bryce now. And what was that about? Why didn't you just keep it professional? Or at least keep it casual?"

"I don't know. It was good for a while, I guess. Or we pretended it was. But we never really knew each other very well. Even after all that time. I was honest about that. And I can't really see opening up to anyone. He got that and he let me be. That number you're talking about isn't the only thing I don't want to be judged on. Not even the only number."

"Graham still keeping score?"

"Yeah. Not even the combat ones or the heavy ordinance stuff we did. Just the special delivery stuff. Targeted strikes and designed eliminations. You think Chuck knowing you were in Argentina was bad..."

"He's going to find out eventually. Maybe he already knows. He's seen you fight. He is analyzing you. He's going to put it all together. Even so, I don't really think you have to worry about it. I watched him watching you at that party. He was mad at you but he kept sneaking these little peeks at you. Noticed other guys looking at you. _Really_ didn't like the way Alahi was ogling you and touching you. Called him a Wookiee. Maybe you ought to move Star Wars up on your movie list. For the record, if my opinion counts for anything, you could do worse. You could do a lot worse. He does seem like a really nice guy. But that's not all there is to him, is it?"

"I think even _you_ think you already know more than you should."

"Speaking of people knowing more than they should, that Argentina thing is still a sticking point for me. He's not just an analyst is he?

"It's pretty simple really. Chuck analyzes intel and me and Casey arrange for other teams to do it or maybe go break stuff ourselves." Sarah sighed at Carina's non-verbal prompting to continue. "Chuck has an - _unusual_ \- mind."

Carina chortled a bit at that but stopped at Sarah's glare. If she wanted to know what was going on this was her only opportunity to shut the fuck up and listen.

"He can retain and process ridiculous amounts of intel. Make connections. If he sees it, he knows it."

"So you're here because..."

"He saw a lot. And I mean a lot. Highest clearance stuff. Now he knows it..and now he's an intelligence asset. My asset."

One of many implications hangs heavy in the air. If he becomes inconvenient, he's disposable. "Oh, god. I'm so sorry."

Carina watched Sarah's eyes go dead like she did when she didn't want to react to something "I have to be their perfect little puppet. We can have the cover. But if I let on that there's anything else to it...if they think I won't burn him..."

Carina reached out to place a hand on Sarah's knee. "Sell a honey pot. Play both sides against the middle."

"I wish you wouldn't call it that. Besides, he's too smart. And too dumb. He'll just think the worst. I cant imagine him hearing me tell Graham that I'm doing a whiz-bang job of controlling him, got him eating out of my hand, and then telling Chuck that I'm _really_ being honest with _him_. And Graham's no idiot either. A whole career of avoiding that kind of thing and I suddenly spontaneously decide that I'm OK with it? And I can't tell Chuck, much of anything really. If I tell him I can't be more than a cover girlfriend because they would reassign me he'd question why they do that and realize that they only do that because they need someone they can trust to put him down."

"And because telling him what you can't do kinda tips your hand on what you _want_ to do." Carina smiled as Sarah just sat there mutely, refusing to rise to the bait as Carina continued. "You remember you're more than welcome to half the rainy day fund, right?"

"Why would I need that?"

"Don't play dumb. This isn't the first time the thought has occurred to you. I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying if you need to, we planned for this."

"You planned for it. I don't think I've quite held up my end."

"I know you keep your dad money separate but you don't find yourself in the same situations I find myself in. I've had a couple of opportunities for some PR work lately."

Sarah laughed at that. Carina had once told Sarah that soundbites like _five hundred thirty four thousand dollars in cash seized_ made for lousy headlines. Half-a-million dollars seized sounded much better. Rolled off the tongue even. Helping the DEA manage their headlines to the amounts the papers would have rounded to anyway was what Carina considered PR work. And when the money was just going to end up in an evidence locker or worse, mysteriously end up in a reelection campaign fund or finance a water park for dairy cows to boost employment in Lincoln, Nebraska...well, it just made more sense to recompense two of America's faithful servants.

"How much this time?"

"Let's just say $100.6 million doesn't sound nearly as good as $100 million."

"You're shitting me! They'll find out. That's too much."

"Well, I had to split it with the locals but I took almost a quarter mil and sent it over in small bundles. Rolf assures me that we are '_in ze clear_' as apparently we Yankees say."

"I love that the debauched little troll calls you a Yankee. He has no idea," Sarah laughed. "I notice you never help the DEA round up."

"I notice you never complain about having a reliable stash just in case."

"Yeah, but I can't just disappear."

"You don't think Scary-Man will ever let you go, do you?"

Sarah cringed at Carina's nickname for Graham from a time when the two women were frequent partners. "You really shouldn't call him that," she said as though the walls had ears.

"Scary-Man, Scary-Man, Scary-Man" she rattled off three-times-fast and looked around the room then raised her arms, shrugging in mock disbelief when the man in question didn't magically appear as if it were actually expected. "Or is it like Bloody Mary and I have to say it into a mirror?"

"Actually, that one's about..." Sarah trailed off, thinking better of mentioning the candle-holding, stair-climbing ritual of folklore in which a young maiden expects to catch a glimpse of her future husband in a mirror. Carina would tease her even more relentlessly if she uttered the 'H'-word. And besides, she was relatively certain she would see the skull instead - the face of her constant, silent companion staring back at her.

"You were going to say something delightfully geeky that I could tease you mercilessly about, weren't you?"

"Something nerdy, yeah. And no...he won't. Let me go. But I really don't want anything bad to happen to this guy. I don't know what to do."

"Well, you can't keep him in a curio cabinet. Gotta make it clear he's valuable where he's at. You bide your time. Wait for your opportunity. The situation sucks so wait for it to change. But make it as hard as possible for him to replace you. Get everyone around him familiar with you. The others I saw you with in the apartment, besides Chuck and Morgan...

"So, you _do_ know his name."

"Of course I do. Hoped he'd get the hint and protect himself better. But the other two, you said they were doctors?"

"Yeah, Chuck's sister Ellie and her boyfriend Devon. What about them?"

"They just seem like good people. All of them. Get in tight with them. Make yourself part of their lives. Boyfriend and girlfriend you say?"

"Mmm-hmm. Ellie - Eleanor but she's definitely an Ellie - said they've known each other forever but had a big rough patch a while back. But they've been back together for almost three years now. Chuck already considers him his brother. It's a foregone conclusion that they'll get married." _And make a lot of really incredibly gorgeous kids_ she thought but kept to herself. "She's... well, she's Chuck's sister. She's basically the best person I've ever met. And Devon is pretty great too and he adores her."

"Ellie and Devon. So they're really happy?"

"Yeah, why are you asking?"

"Nothing. No games anyway. I'm just glad you're surrounded by good people. Even Casey."

"Oh, that reminds me. I have to show you something. You really shouldn't have left him like that but I thought it was pretty funny at the time."

Sarah pulled out her phone to find what she was looking for, and Carina commented on it. "That phone case is frickin' huge."

"I know. Chuck gets a discount on merchandise. Maybe I'll get a smaller one. Here we go," and she handed the phone to Carina.

"Oh god!" Carina smiled at the picture of Casey cuffed to the headboard. "I wish you could send me that but you should probably delete it. I knew he could get out of it. It was just bad timing that Alahi found you guys before he could get loose."

"How _did_ you get him to fall for that? Again."

"Well the first time - in Prague - I worked with him on an infiltration thing in '03, before we put the girl band together. Have you considered, maybe talking to Z?" Sarah's expression made it clear that she would not consider that. "Never mind. Anyway, Casey. He wasn't as grumpy then. We were just having fun afterward then he went and started getting all gooey with me but said something stupid about girls like me and the things I had done just on that mission. I couldn't get out the door fast enough and didn't want him following me to the train station."

Carina conveniently left out that she was going a little gooey herself. And that she broke down on the train platform as she realized that no man could ever accept her for what she is. "But that was an iron headboard so he had to call for help. This time was me slipping a knockout cap that I have a tolerance for in my mouth. Just enough to get him woozy and guide him to the bed. The rest was your magic handcuff trick and my magic pants trick. But it was to remind him what he could have had. If he could've gotten past what I am."

"Maybe _you_ can get past what you are. Be what you want to be instead."

"You know that ship has sailed. No buns without an oven. And don't start on adoption, again. I don't even exist on paper. No one's going to trust me with a kid. Hell, I don't trust me with a kid after the things I've done. And it was the whole building a life part of it I wanted not just using some poor kid to check the boxes. But maybe I'll figure something else out. See if there's anything else I want out of this shitty world. Let me see again?"

Sarah passed the phone back and Carina flipped back to shots of Sarah and Chuck. One candid shot captured the curly haired nerd sharing a fist bump with his inevitably-soon-to-be-brother-in-law.

"Hmm. Maybe we're both just destined to meet the right guys at the wrong time. Maybe thats our punishment, not getting killed but never getting anything that we want. Or maybe you should figure out what you want to be. He really is cute. And sharp like you. Bryce has the catalog model thing going on but he's got...character, I guess."

"Yeah, he does. Which... I was thinking a while ago... can I let him in on our contact system? Not that it's you on the other end, it's just he's really good with computers and I can ask him hypotheticals about hiding communications."

"You really trust him?"

"I know he can come up with something super clever."

"Especially, if it's for you. I know, I know. But Jesus, that guy would walk through hell for you."

"I know." Sarah sighed. "That kinda makes it worse."

"Yeah. But you never know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe things will turn around. Live another day and anything is possible." Carina noticed the time and stood to say her goodbyes. "Sure. Talk to Chuck. I know you'll be here. I've got your numbers and I'll update the email. Put instructions in there when he comes up with something super clever."

Carina faced the window as she put on her jacket and spoke without turning "I never did thank you for that did I? Giving me another day?"

"No. But thats OK. Change your mind about that yet?"

"Not yet. I'm not sure I believe it yet either. But maybe one day I will." Carina transitioned to an overly cheerful voice and clasped her hands together as she turned to face Sarah. "Well, Sarah. Our time is up today but I think we've made really good progress here. Stop by the front desk to set up our next appointment. Don't forget to tip your waitresses."

Sarah ignored her mocking of the therapy sessions Carina had once gamed to downplay her bipolar issues so she would be allowed back in the field. "Well be careful out there. Stop free climbing balconies for fuck's sake. I'd like to see you make it to that day."

"OK mom. Don't worry, it's not like I'm gonna get _Do Not Resuscitate_ tattooed across my chest or anything. And I'm not going full blown seductress. Unless he's really nice. Your little friend might make me reconsider my position on nice guys."

"He has an annoying habit of doing that. Making you reconsider things." And if Carina ever admitted she was wrong about nice guys, that would change everything. "Can I ask you a serious question without you assuming you know why I'm asking?"

Carina nodded.

"Would you have actually slept with Chuck?"

"Well, I doubt we'd have done much sleeping..." when Sarah didn't smile back Carina knew she owed a true answer. She knew the true answer and she didn't like it. "Would you hate me if I said I don't know? I've done worse for less. But not to you. I came at him like it was part of an op and I'm not in the best place and I just don't know. I'm sorry. I wish I could say no. I'm not much of a friend am I?"

"I said don't assume you know why I'm asking. You can't let them," and she gestured to the necklace concealed beneath Carina's jacket "define you forever. Don't let what they took from you define you. I have never said anything about your choices - they're _your_ choices. And I haven't exactly been saving myself. But - maybe you could just be you for a while - try it on and see if that's enough?"

"Maybe." Carina toyed with the zipper of her jacket for a few seconds before deciding that these were answers that would take some time to figure out and smiling at her friend's concern. "Well, it's been swell maybe I'll look you up next time I'm in Burbank. Like that'll happen. Maybe we can meet up in LA proper. We had some fun there a few times. Should I ask Graham for your help if I have anything anywhere tropical?"

"Like I said. I'm good here."

"You know I think maybe you are. You seem different here."

"Good different or bad different?"

"I think I'll let you figure that out for yourself. See ya when I see ya CIA...Sarah Walker. It suits you. Better than Anderson. Maybe you can take your own advice. See if you like who Sarah Walker is."

"Carina suits you too. I like her."

"I think so. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point. Hang on to her for a while if I can. Try her on and see if I like the fit. Well, once more into the breach."

"Careful. Your smarts are showing."

"Be fair. I don't mean to hide them, and I just... I really like hearing you tell stories."

And that was her secret. Being underestimated. She could outlast anyone because there was no line she wouldn't cross. Sarah had wondered occasionally what would happen if she ever faced off against this more deadly incarnation of the woman she had met in Bolivia years ago. The ultimate survivor against the ultimate predator.

But she wasn't _just_ a survivor anymore. Sarah had seen to that. Trained her up herself after she had set unforeseeable wheels in motion. Any doubts about her now lethal nature were erased when they said goodbye and Carina hugged her close and whispered a reminder in her ear. "Vi är evig."

She was gone as quickly as she came. Carina Miller smiled and slipped though one side of the door and Sylvia Marcos slipped through the other.

Freed from some of the burden she had carried for the last five years maybe she could reinvent herself again. Into someone less likely to crash and burn. And Sarah thought if Carina Miller turned out to be someone the woman bearing the name could live with maybe Sarah Walker could do the same.

.

* * *

041: Girls Like Us

* * *

.

Los Angeles, CA; October, 2004

.

The team had been together for over a year but not continuously. They all were recalled by their various agencies from time to time to participate in missions requiring their specific skills. But they were all currently back together and just off a successful mission outside of Buenos Aires. They were in Los Angeles for a debriefing for the next few days before heading off to their next assignment in Rio de Janeiro and had started off in a raucous dance club on Beverly Boulevard before relaxing at a more loungy place a few blocks away.

The group had grown a lot closer over that time. Kelly and Christine (her full name restored by consensus) had started off as the closest but all four found they were kindred spirits on a dance floor. Kelly and Amy were more interested in finding the man of the moment but Christine and Zondra were generally more interested in the attention and exertion for its own sake.

Zondra had finally opened up a bit when Christine made good on her promise to help her with a family matter once they pried what had clearly been bothering her out of her. The entire team of government agents didn't care that it could be construed as mob related, family was family. And Zondra's was, by extension, theirs despite the fact that there was no homecoming or restoration of her various relationships when they took care of the men threatening her brother.

They had abandoned their Four Horseman analogy once Zondra and Amy became bored with fighting over what they called table scraps. Kelly had been simply 'Red' for a while but the two blondes were trickier. Their latest was based on a cartoon playing on the TV in their hotel suite and Zondra mockingly calling Amy 'Bubbles'. Amy hadn't caught the snark of it and had instead immediately bestowed the names Blossom and Buttercup to Kelly and Zondra, respectively.

Christine had just shaken her head at the whole affair when Amy noted that a three-girl team left Christine out. A trivial point about three being more stable than four had broken down into laughter at the use of the word 'stable' and what each had witnessed of the other three over their time together.

"Just call me Christine." she had said, at least thankful that they could move on from calling her 'Death' but Zondra had another idea.

"How 'bout Chemical X? That's what gave them their powers right?" Zondra suggested and Christine just smiled at her and her suggestion that she was somehow something that bound the team together.

Zondra had really started to look up to Christine after she had taken charge of the team to help her family and - even though she had an incredibly tough exterior - it was clear that she would walk through a wall for Christine. After addressing that 'family matter' and Christine deferring to her preference that no one involved be killed if at all avoidable, Zondra had mostly deferred to Christine as leader of the team by default.

Zondra appreciated that her own misgivings about the legality of their actions were sometimes a limitation to the team and that while Christine was on the hairy edge of an irrational cliff that Kelly and Amy seemed to have jumped from long ago she maintained a clinical detachment and a keen strategist's mind. Christine admired Zondra's sense of justice and desire to do the right thing. And hated how easy it had become for her to bend the rules. In many ways, Zondra was what Christine had hoped to be when she joined The Agency.

"Or just X," chimed in the newly appointed 'Blossom' after a bit of teasing that Zondra even knew that detail. "It's like saying '_insert name here_'," she joked. It had become well known that neither Christine nor Kelly were the real names of the the two women but that really is what she was. Something strong that they all drew some degree of strength and power from but that was ultimately mysterious and unknown. And dangerous.

The game they played was simple and started out as a way to embarrass wannabe players. If a guy was showing a lot of interest in one of them, another would try to distract him and turn his attentions toward escalating things with the second woman. If he resisted or returned to the first woman, he passed the test. Anything else was a failure resulting in rejection and usually some pretty amusing posturing and verbal abuse that was easily squashed.

The game had begun as another group thing until everyone realized how possessive Amy could be and that Zondra's tastes weren't the same as the other three. Christine sometimes preferred dancing with groups of women anyway when she didn't want to be bothered and both she and Kelly would occasionally good-naturedly play the game with a woman who showed interest in Zondra just as Zondra did it with the men they met. Zondra actually took it in the spirit it was intended - as acceptance of something she had hidden from friends most of her life, part of her estrangement from her family - and as inclusion in all of the bizarre and unconventional teasing that went on between the four women.

Kelly would often ask Christine for her opinion on guys and Christine was careful if there was someone she found interesting; someone that she thought she might want to dance with later. If she let on, Kelly would pounce before the rules of the game applied. Kelly often teased Christine saying she was just taking advantage of the fact that Christine had "really good 'radar' for guys that were good in the sack" but far more often than not she was simply screening them.

Initially Kelly watched for unwanted suitors and Christine's reaction to them, helping to block them until Christine became more artful at it. Then she became a tutor of sorts for a young woman who could turn any man's head and knew the seduction handbook cover to cover but little about getting what she wanted for herself. Only then did it become a little fun to mess with her occasionally. They eventually adopted an abort signal whenever Christine had found a guy she had decided she wanted to do more than dance with and Kelly would revert dutifully to her role of wingman, easily undoing any damage done.

Christine had initially resisted the idea of casual hook ups but had been cajoled into it a few times early on when enough alcohol was involved. Eventually she conceded that the nature of their work meant that every bypassed opportunity to feel something - even if it were purely physical - might be her last such opportunity. Some days the idea appalled her and some days she just wanted and needed that physical anchor for the thin thread between her and humanity.

None were exactly fulfilling experiences on any level beyond the moment itself and, as a group, they limited their outings to the ends of missions. This provided a built in excuse to call such arrangements with men what they were and few objected. Lately she was avoiding anything beyond minor physical affection with any of the men she danced with despite their best efforts. But she did allow herself to enjoy the physical release of the dance floor – which she really didn't need a partner for – except to occasionally enjoy the warmth of her partner holding her as they danced. Maybe she did have good radar because she didn't seem to choose very many ass grabbers.

Kelly had gone the other way.

She could almost automatically hook up with the hottest guy in the room. When they occasionally turned out to be relatively nice and decent men, she had a lovely evening dancing with them and otherwise enjoying their company. She was almost always back to whatever hotel suite the four of them were sharing before breakfast the next day.

But more often, over the course of their brief time together, her target would reveal himself to be arrogant, mean-spirited, self-important or otherwise a complete douche in a way that offended her and turn from companion to prey. In either case, she let them know they were in for the time of their lives, and then she had her way with them in a way dictated by the answers they revealed about their basic nature under her subtle interrogation.

In some cases she delivered on the promises made in screaming whispers in some club. In others she only partly delivered until she could revel in doing something horrible or humiliating to him while he slept or shortly after their encounter. She had caused overdue divorces, ruined careers and small scale political campaigns (and created one major scandal in a small South American nation) and generally provided much needed behavioral correction for men with over inflated opinions of themselves. She considered it a public service.

Last night the team had danced and flirted for most of the night with a group of doctors celebrating the completion of their residencies. Most of them couldn't help themselves from loudly emphasizing that they were doctors and talking about how much money they were going to make. None of the women – at least none of the women on the team – were very impressed and the young doctors didn't realize they had marked themselves as targets.

Kelly had retreated into a corner with a young man with the look of a model and a booming baritone voice before Christine had even arrived. They could hear him from their seats at the bar every time Kelly made him laugh. Which was often, she was really on her game that night. He was tall. He and Kelly stood eye-to-eye even with her in her four-inch heels. He seemed like the type she preyed on. He was easily the best looking of the bunch so logic dictated he would be the most arrogant.

Amy was all over her when she joined them at the bar the next night. "Someone missed breakfast. Details, details!"

Kelly didn't seem as enthusiastic to share the story as she usually was. "He was…surprising."

Christine suspected this meant he was one of the few men who had escaped her wrath but Zondra couldn't help but deliver the crass comment accompanied by a thumb and index finger held a half inch apart. "Tiny, huh?"

"Uh no, not at all. He just threw me off my game a little."

.

* * *

.

Last Night / Early That Morning

.

She lay on his chest in fleeting post-coital bliss dragging her fingernails lightly across his chest and abdomen. She hadn't met anyone remotely like this in a long, long time and it made her wish she were different and could possibly have something like this be a part of her life. But it couldn't last. She had unfinished business and owed ruthless people for making it possible. People who made her certain that anything that felt as good as this meant she was missing some angle and in the nasty, vindictive side of her brain the wheels were starting to turn. He played with her hair and his voice rumbled through his chest disturbing her scheming. "This is so surreal. You're so beautiful."

She lifted her head and looked up at him. "You're pretty handsome yourself. Why were you out all alone?" Wife? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Maybe she would find out the details and send them a picture or two commemorating his betrayal. Maybe she'd find the contact in the guy's phone or she'd even use agency resources to get what she needed. She'd done it before.

"Oh, I haven't been out much at all lately but when I do, it would be alone."

She took a guess. "So why'd she dump you?"

"'Cause I was stupid and selfish. We'd dated off and on for over four years. And maybe I just got scared and couldn't admit it. Told her I needed to concentrate on my career."

"So you just started wolfing around like tonight?" She smiled to soften the accusation and was surprised that he put all the fault on himself but maybe he'd been trying to prove something to himself and had callously hurt a bunch of women along the way. She set an over/under in her mind. If he had screwed over more than six women she would make an anonymous call and they would find prescription drugs in his locker at the hospital. She could take care of that before breakfast.

"No…no. Haven't been with anyone until I met you."

"When did you two break up?"

"About six months ago."

Good lord, this guy with the six-pack abs and chiseled jaw took himself off the market for six months? Her curiosity was getting the better of her. "So you just fell out of love with her?"

"God, no. If anything it was the opposite. She's brilliant...and beautiful. And the nicest person you could ever meet. She practically raised her little brother and took him back in when he hit a rough patch even though she has all the same obligations that I do – she's doing a residency too. I used to be kind of a jerk and she made me want to be better. Be good enough for her. I'm not sure I ever will be. She should have been there tonight but…" He paused and took a deep breath. "Sooo…it's kind of rude of me to be talking about this laying here naked with you. Can we talk about something else?"

It _was_ kind of pathetic. Maybe she could just do something juvenile like send him for ice, leave and lock him out. "You guys were celebrating tonight. Something about finishing your residency?"

"Oh, not me. Josh and Tyler finished their residencies a couple weeks ago. I've got a while to go on mine."

"Why? What kind of doctor are you going to be?"

"Cardio Thoracic Surgeon" He literally fixes broken hearts and he can't get his own shit straight? The rest of his 'bros' had been the stereotypical arrogant jerks. Tyler was unbearable. She had suggested the two of them separate from the group and find a corner where they could 'talk'. Z had checked on her before the girls split and the two of them had alternated between dancing and talking about everything and nothing for hours. But he had never tried to boast. You would think someone would brag about becoming a heart surgeon. He was still seriously understating the commitment he had made to his career. She knew he had finished med school last year so he probably had years of residency remaining.

"Cardio, like aerobics?" she played dumb.

"Nah, heart surgeon." He thumped his chest once with his palm near where her chin was resting as he said it. He hadn't even mocked her by laughing at her 'stupid' act. "My dad had a problem when I was in high school. Another kid in my class had a murmur that made him quit playing football. They're both alive and kicking. I guess I just hope I can do something to help people out. We always talked about maybe volunteering…" He paused as he had before and guilt was written all over his face. Guilt for cheating on someone he wasn't actually dating at the moment. "Sorry, seems I can't help but kill the mood."

She was a little frustrated. He was disrupting her philosophy on men in general. But she considered him the exception that proves the rule. She sighed as she conceded defeat. She was his. For tonight. He was in love with someone else but had fucked it up. OK, so he was a coward when it came to love but so was everyone she knew. Especially CIA.

They had already had fantastic sex. Twice. He was an impressive physical specimen in every possible way and it was so good she wouldn't count it against him. He had passed every other test and she was willing to give him a pass on any perceived betrayal of his estranged love.

She didn't know what possessed her to do it. She didn't know this other woman. Didn't even know her name. Maybe she just hadn't been able to figure out how this man beneath her would ultimately fail this amazing but faceless woman he had described and she was sentencing the poor thing to more heart break. But she decided to take a chance. After all, it wasn't her own heart at stake.

"Look." And she suddenly moved to straddle him, grabbed his face in both hands and forced him to look her in the eye. "I'm here. Right now. And I'm glad that I am." He smiled at her but she wasn't trying to win his affection but rather to give him a dose of reality. "But I won't be tomorrow.

"We can do whatever you want to do for the rest of the night but tomorrow you're going to start fixing this. You do whatever it takes to win this woman back. And treat her well for as long as she'll let you. You'll be fixing broken hearts for real soon." She gave him a crooked half-smile. "Don't make me come after you for malpractice." She shifted back to her previous position and laid her head back on his chest.

They just laid there holding each other. Well past when she normally would have picked up her things and left. He stayed awake the whole night finally falling asleep just before the sunrise that roused her. Consumed with guilt for betraying a woman he had all but given up on he did nothing more than hold her tightly while she slept.

And she let him.

.

* * *

.

Back to the Bar

.

"So you just left?" Zondra was disappointed. She loved the 'aftershock' stories as she called them. And Kelly usually liked the idea of the encounters beforehand being compared to earthquakes. The analogy even came complete with a delightfully crass Richter scale to grade them on. But last night she didn't apply a rating.

Kelly just shrugged and absently stirred the ice cubes of her nearly empty drink. "He's in love with someone else. He was just too stupid to see it. Hopefully I woke him up. Other than being an idiot about women – which really does nothing to make him unique – he seems like a really great guy. She sounds pretty great too. They deserve each other."

Amy chimed in with a question "Ever think that maybe you deserve a nice guy too?" Kelly had spent a little time just walking around this morning contemplating that very question. She hadn't come up with any new answers.

Kelly smiled at Amy in response but Christine saw the life leave her eyes completely for a moment and then Kelly said something that stuck with Christine forever. Something she remembered anytime she was tempted to do more than dance.

"Girls like us don't deserve nice guys."

She polished off the remaining liquid contents of her glass and rose to get another.

"And nice guys sure as hell don't deserve girls like us."

Kelly could have gone her whole life never paying for a single drink but she chose to pay her own way rather than accept a drink from a stranger. She trusted no one. Amy bounced after Kelly reminding Christine of the old cartoons with the tiny dog yapping after the lead dog - begging for attention or approval. "C'mon, tell me more. Was he really that great?"

Kelly leaned her hip against the bar and raised the first two fingers on her right hand to flag down the bartender. He acknowledged with a nod and started to make his way toward them. She sighed deeply before she responded "Yeah…he was awesome."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: And now you know the other half of what Sarah was thinking while watching Chuck on the beach (waaaaaaay back in Part VI, Ch 14).

Crazy people are crazy: On a multi-day 'field trip' in high school, a guy I knew did the same balcony climb Carina did in reverse to get from the boy's floor up to the girl's floor and his girlfriend's room. (Students could move freely among rooms on their own floor and her roommates had made themselves scarce. I'm sure they just had important stuff to talk about.) We were actually a few floors _higher_ than Sarah's room - 11th and 12th floors, I think. He probably should have been a tragic evening news story. He was caught - likely because of the smarter of the roommates who didn't want him falling on the way back down - and sent back downstairs but didn't reveal how he slipped past the chaperones.

What's in a Name: That's right. Sarah Walker's full name is Sarah Madison Walker. If it is to be believed that Lisa is her _real_ middle name and Sarah Walker is an _alias_ it would be either silly or coincidental if her full alias was (at least at this point) Sarah Lisa Walker. It confounds me when clues about the true and the false are combined but you're just going to have to trust me on this incredibly minor point for a while. I'll let you figure out Graham's little joke for yourselves but Madison became popular as a girl's name after the 1984 movie Splash where Daryl Hannah's mermaid character assumes the name (from a street sign on Madison Avenue) and that actually has nothing to do with the joke.

Spies know little about dairy farming: I'm a little unfair to Nebraska. Everyone knows their agricultural claim to fame is corn (although third to Iowa and Illinois). The biggest dairy state in the US? Wisconsin, right? Nope. Second to California.

Ancient History: Anticipatory absolution? First brought to my attention in, what else, Dante's _Inferno_. Pope Boniface VIII (or VII due to some weird argument over 'antipopes') asked Guido I da Montefeltro for help in dealing with some political rivals who claimed the Pope's election was illegal. The advice was very Game of Thrones but only given after the Pope preemptively absolved him of the sin of 'fraudulent counsel' before sharing the idea. In 1298, the Pope followed the advice, giving the rival Colonnas family assurances that their city would be spared if they surrendered peacefully and left their fortress. Then his army obliterated them and razed the entire city to the ground.

.

* * *

.

Extra A/N (lucky you): The extra nice thing about being a Chuckster is that, by and large, the show's cast seem to be just awesome human beings. I'm sure there's some degree of PR and image management but several seem like the type of people you would hope to have as friends - types of people, not them specifically - unless, you know, they wanna hang out - completely independent of their celebrity (or, let's face it, attractiveness). Many cast friendships continue and I especially love that Mekenna Melvin seems to have become an honorary CAT in real life.

Now, most people appreciate that the actor does not equal the character but much of Carina's appeal is Mini Andén's physical appearance since we don't get much time to get to know the character. Mini is primarily known as a model and it occurred to me that certain elements of Carina's character as presented here are common stereotypes of models but were NOT meant as commentary on those stereotypes or the woman herself. I only realized late in the game that the potential for that interpretation existed so, let me say the following:

Mini Andén is model thin but there is no reason to believe she is unhealthily thin or has any of the weight problems portrayed here. The same goes for any drug abuse, psychological issues, plastic surgery or other unflattering behaviors. Just because the character is - unsurprisingly - as thin (and as tall and as beautiful) as the woman who portrays her doesn't mean I had any intention of casting aspersions on the actress via character development / plot choices.

Mini also has a young son who she clearly adores so the turn of events for her character here seems particularly cruel. The bit about Carina's crucifix and the necklace, even that the crucifix was once her grandmothers, was written before I wondered about the tattoo on her forearm (Carina has Mini's tattoos, of course) and learned that it is, in fact, a replica of the actress' actual grandmother's crucifix which she often wears so I worked the origin of the tattoo into the story.

Unrelated to this story, Susanna 'Mini' Andén is an accomplished model, host and TV personality, has done some other acting besides CHUCK (one appearance alluded to here) and a little producing, seems to be quite down to earth and has been married to a man she also clearly adores for thirteen years (and she's only 36). So the actress and the character are really only outwardly similar but I wanted to be extra clear that this is just a story.

Last installment had no end note because I felt the material was too heavy to follow up with anything frivolous. Things will start to get lighter if not downright fluffy over upcoming installments. The character treatment for Carina is meant to be a little upsetting because it has to allow for some foul treatment and reasons for multiple transformations in order to explain both her behaviors and those canon ramifications we've discussed ad nauseum. Here I wanted her to take a different path than Sarah yet become just as formidable. Be just as damaged by it all while still retaining an endearing core (hopefully).

I've always felt that way about Carina with little evidential support. She has captured the imagination of many CHUCK fanfic writers with only two major and two minor appearances. She's a personal favorite of mine and, after a little research tornado meant to identify something as minor as a forearm tattoo but yielding multiple interviews over the years, I can say the same about the actress who portrays her.


	16. XVI: Pillars and Pedestals

...in which Sarah contemplates the nature of the relationships she is infiltrating and an outsider makes her own observations...

Canon Reference: Episode 105 ('Sizzling Shrimp')

Contents: Two chapters (8,500 words and 4,600 words); but each consists of basically three subsections or, if you will, in the spirit of an evening of Morgan, three acts; the first is canon-plus, the second is a three-pronged insert; the two overlap somewhat with the second explaining some things in the first (so don't be overly concerned if you're not yet sure to what a character is referring); and the second is the first 'trio' chapter I have written! (Chuck, Sarah and Casey POVs)

A/N: I was exhausted after the previous installment! How about you readers? I'm also looking ahead to future installments and how to deal with the great holiday season timeline debacle of 2007 and, for those of you who've never tried it, the site document editor might be more frustrating than writing with none of the fulfillment. So it will be a while before I do another 20K installment (jinx!) and I'm taking a bit of a break here with a 'short' offering. A mere 13K words. ;)

This is something of a return to the canon-inspired insertions rather than the epic arcs of the previous seven installments or so (the first four fed the next three somewhat). 'Sizzling Shrimp' and 'Sandworm' are a little light on Sarah-specific content so I had plenty of room to play around with some of the 'layers' of key characters that may or may not come back up much later. I like calling things arcs (especially when they're not) so let's call it the 'Sizzling Sandworm' arc. Doesn't that sound scrumptious? Can you imagine the size of the frier? Or the takeout container for that matter?

Some details of Sizzling Shrimp are a hot mess if you try to dissect it. For 'rewatchers' I did manipulate the blocking of one scene just to suit my purposes rather than any glaring 'issues' - its just vague. Some things you just have to accept as endearing quirks. Fun but really the only thing of consequence is a very emotionally important bit of Bartowski family lore. However, I like to come up with different angles on things but this one went to some 'interesting' places and part of it began with there apparently being some minor translation issues in the Chinese Consulate part of the opening sequence...

Holiday! Celebrate!: Parts of this installment might be better suited to a Halloween story but Thanksgiving is almost upon us (or behind us for our Canadian friends). I posted my last installment the day prior to Veteran's Day / Remembrance Day (Canada) and had to decide, in an already too-long installment, and to an audience not limited to the United States of America, if I wanted to mention it then or now and decided on this...

Veteran's Day celebrations have come and gone. But as we in America prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to consider that our appreciation of their service should not be limited to a single day. Today's conflicts are not as black and white as yesterday's but today's soldiers assume the same responsibilities, risks and sacrifices. Some do not return and many who do carry lingering, even lifelong, physical and psychological burdens we cannot fathom. Some may be lining up at shelters and soup kitchens as we prepare to feast and watch atypically competitive football games. So please, regardless of your politics or ideology, consider the sacrifices of these men and women, past and present as you consider your own blessings and consider what small aid you can provide in the future.

'Thank You' seems insufficient.

On a lighter note...

KANSG!: No one noted that the previous installment saw the first use of the phrase KANSG. Or, as it is more commonly recognized, 'Kick Ass Ninja Spy Girl'. I am now almost one hundred percent convinced that this phrase is fanon. I have been unable to locate it upon rewatch and scouring various flawed transcripts. If anyone can tell me when and by whom it is uttered in canon I will give you a virtual cookie. If it IS fanon and anyone knows the originator of the phrase, then may we all sing songs of their glory and prowess in battle. But I suspect, it is an elemental truth of the universe that Sarah Walker simply is a Kick Ass Ninja Spy Girl and people know this deep in their DNA...

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: No monetary or other benefit of tangible value is derived from this work. No ownership of or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, in this installment, no ownership of or claim to Bruce Lee's fighting style / philosophy or his most well known movie, _Up_, _Star Wars_, _Big Trouble in Little China_, or a folklore concept on which Iron Maiden based a concept album is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XVI: Pillars and Pedestals

* * *

.

Prelude

.

Los Angeles, Chinese Consulate, October 9, 2007 5:15 pm

.

Lee Cho was wrapping up his affairs in Los Angeles - an investigation of accounting irregularities concerning the immigration of several Chinese citizens to Los Angeles over the last few years - and smiled as his saw the unknown number appear on his phone.

He had received several such calls from his elder sister over the past few days but none of her concerns seemed founded. She couldn't even describe the nature of the threat, just that he was in some sort of danger. He smiled as he answered the call while descending the stairs outside the main entrance and spoke to her in their native Mandarin.

_"Well, well. If it isn't my paranoid sister."_

Lee Cho made his way toward the front gate where his car service and regular driver had just arrived. One more night in Los Angeles and he would submit his findings and be safely on his way back home. He smiled at his sister's well-meaning but unfounded concerns. There had been no indication of any danger throughout his three months in the U.S.

_"Yes, I've gotten your messages. And no, I'm not in any trouble. Just busy with work. So we will see each other in Beijing then..."_

When the white van pulled up and the men inside killed his driver, plastered a piece of duct tape over his mouth and threw him into the back of the van his only thought was that, as paranoid as her concerns had seemed, ever since they were a teenagers on the rare occasions she offered her unsolicited advice his sister had never been wrong.

.

* * *

042: Pedestals

* * *

_Don't put me on a pedestal, for I am sure to fall_

_Just love me as I am, flaws and all_

\- Unknown

* * *

.

Act One: Morgan

Scene One: Be Casual

.

Buy More, Nerd Herd Desk, October 13, 2007 6:47 pm

.

It all started innocuously enough when Chuck described it as just he and Sarah hanging out with Ellie and Morgan - or as the latter had labelled it: 'an evening of Morgan'. She had no idea how Ellie got roped into it. She had raised her eyebrows over a sip of Diet Coke from her Weinerlicious cup as Chuck tried to sell her on the idea after Casey had pretty much summed up her own feelings on the matter.

But she had also decided that Carina had offered some pretty good advice. She needed to make herself an accepted part of Chuck's life by his family and friends. Just one of many considerations to help ensure that she would remain assigned to his protection.

Ellie was easy. Not that Ellie was gullible although she was, thankfully, as predisposed as Chuck to be trusting. She often had to remind herself that Chuck's sister was highly intelligent, highly observant and, for some reason, highly protective of her brother. More than one would expect of even the closest siblings. But Ellie was easy because Sarah genuinely liked Ellie, wanted Ellie to like her and thought that, maybe, she actually already did.

Morgan was trickier. He was strange. Unpredictable. Sarah didn't give him much thought one way or another unless he was interfering with her access to Chuck and had already shown that he either didn't like her, was very distrustful of her, or both.

"So, what should I expect of an evening of Morgan?" she asked once Casey had walked away from the Nerd Herd desk.

Chuck answered distractedly after enumerating Casey's redeeming if comically bland qualities. "All I know is Chinese food. But," he brightened with enthusiasm as he turned to face her with that infectious smile. "I get to show you around Chinatown, so that'll be fun."

"What should I wear for this...outing?"

"You don't wanna wear that?" Chuck smiled and raised his eyebrows twice quickly as he gestured to her Weinerlicious costume.

"I _will_ hurt you." She narrowed her eyes with none of the venom that usually accompanied the gesture and pointed the straw of her drink at him but he didn't appear intimidated in the least.

Anna Wu was approaching with an invoice for an install and smiled her approval of Sarah when she overheard that.

"Just casual. Be comfortable, you're gorgeous in anything," Chuck said as he took the invoice from Anna and she winked at Sarah and the compliment Chuck had just paid to Sarah. Sarah could tell that he hadn't meant to say it out loud. "Umm...I mean, we're just headed back to my place and Ellie will be there so it won't be too bad?"

Sarah smiled at his attempt to diffuse the comment as the declaration twisted itself into a question. "I really got the sense that Morgan just doesn't like me." She fought the instinct to bend her own statement into a question as Chuck had but it still must have shown through.

"Morgan is just used to us hanging out all the time. I...uhh...honestly, I think I'm seeing what Ellie's been trying to say. He's sort of my slacker-enabler but he's also a really loyal friend and he's helped... He's helped me through a lot, OK?"

"Chuck. You don't have to justify it. If he's important to you he's important to me." she was mildly surprised that it was true. Morgan was mildly amusing, just overbearing with no respect for boundaries even she recognized. Sarah supposed that the reasons for the strong friendship between Chuck and Morgan were likely as complicated and unexplainable as her relationship with the woman they both knew as Carina.

"Honestly, his opinion of you - or at least his discomfort sharing me with you - turned around a bit when you set him up with Carina even though it didn't work out."

"Told you it was a great idea," she said as she grinned around her straw and took another sip of her drink. Truthfully, she doubted that mutual unpredictability was a very good basis for anything real but at least what had seemed like a failed annoyance ploy at the time had provided some unanticipated benefit if Morgan was now more receptive to her.

"Well, he may have voiced an opinion that you probably have a lot of - his words - hot friends - so..."

"And I do. Or a few at least. But I hope he doesn't meet them. That would likely mean something bad has happened. I'm sure you can convince him that most of my friends are back in DC."

"You did tell me that all of your friends were _Bruce's_ friends," Chuck's smile of knowing remembrance at their first date over margaritas and Mexican food let her know there was no judgment over the barely concealed name of the partner she left behind. At least that secret was no longer between them. "Are we calling the people we know in DC friends?"

"Hmm. Probably not," and she grinned that crooked little smirk he so adored before acknowledging his concealed acceptance. "Bruce can have 'em."

Chuck positively beamed at that. "Good. But what I told Morgan was that he would never find out if you knew any other Carina-esque women..."

Sarah chuckled as she interrupted. "There are no Carina-esque women besides the original."

"Fair point. But I told him he would never find out about any of your currently hypothetical hot friends if _he_ didn't get to know _you_, and get _you_ to like _him_ and, more importantly, I went ahead and I...uhh... I told him that you were going to be a relatively permanent fixture in my life. One that he needed to accept and learn to respect. Umm... Is that OK?"

Sarah was stricken by the relative normalcy of this conversation, vague references aside. And how much she loved the fact that Chuck didn't just lean on the bargaining chip of possible future double dates with women as attractive as Carina. He had thrown down the gauntlet. Sarah was here to stay. Deal with it. Even though he wasn't completely sure that was the case. Even though she had no idea how long she would be allowed to stay.

It was more than OK. Despite the circumstances, she thought that's exactly how she wanted it to be - or would have wanted it to be if Chuck truly were her boyfriend and Morgan was causing trouble.

_If it were remotely real._

But she revealed none of that when she replied simply "Yeah, Chuck. That's OK."

.

* * *

.

Act One: Morgan

Scene Two: An Evening of Morgan

.

Chinatown, October 13, 2007 6:47 pm

.

The evening had eventually devolved rapidly but - surprisingly - that had not been Morgan's fault.

She had called in a delivery from the field support office in LA. She wanted something a little more casual than what she normally wore - calculated spontaneity - and wished she had stopped off to buy something herself. Selecting an outfit from the options provided would have to do so she went with red and black. A simple, red, extra low scoop neck top and red patent-leather purse paired with a black leather jacket to pair with black jeans and open-toed, black pumps.

Normally, an entire wardrobe was provided based upon her cover identity and mission needs. This was the first time she had been told 'whatever you need' and found she had no idea what she wanted. She initially requested clothing for a low-income-so-thrifty 25-year-old woman who wanted to look somewhat fashionable. She had kept a few things from that initial attempt but mostly it had looked like a thrift store exploded on her bed. She had since repeated the exercise a few times, keeping a few articles of clothing from each, but she was still trying to figure out what Sarah Walker wore.

Only when she was walking through Chinatown with the two childhood friends were the 'Three Acts' of an Evening with Morgan fully revealed. And quicker than she could contemplate just how much shrimp in her belly _would_ be enough to make a seal jealous and whether or not she was really up for that - all while resisting the urge that would ordinarily have left Morgan pulling back a bloody stump when he poked her playfully in her belly - Chuck and Morgan were mock fighting in an homage to Bruce Lee's _Enter the Dragon_.

She surprised herself when she didn't even try not to laugh.

It isn't Jeet Kune Do, not even close. She would know. A philosophy similar to Bruce Lee's JKD "style without a style" permeated the training she mastered on various styles and forms of martial arts. The emphasis is on interception - attacking your opponent as he is about to attack. On efficiency of movement and infliction of maximum damage over a specific style. It is similar to Krav Maga in that regard but with more emphasis on speed and quickness over power and infliction of damage. Grace over brutality. And a really wicked close-quarters Wing Chun-style 'vertical punch'. For those reasons, a JKD approach leveraging multiple styles is more suited to her natural speed and agility than any one specific style though they all have their place in her repertoire.

But their ineptitude isn't why she is laughing, although their comical slap-fight pantomime of what _they_ think looks vaguely like Kung Fu movie fight choreography is amusing in and of itself. She is laughing at the good natured, carefree interaction between the two men.

Morgan is, in a word, odd.

He is a man child with no apparent inclination to improve himself or join the adult world in any way. At first glance, Chuck has some of the same shortcomings. Admitted as much to her earlier today. But she has seen over just the past month or so that Chuck is capable of extraordinary things with or without the Intersect.

This isn't the first time that she has envisioned the two of them - comical versions to be honest, Morgan smaller but still with a thick, full beard and Chuck just as tall but even thinner - behaving exactly the same way when they were students in junior high school. She doesn't yet know the full story of their childhood together but Chuck was mature enough to have been, at one time, a promising student at a prestigious college. That combined with his outgoing nature and natural charm made Sarah assume that Chuck _could_ have been a a highly popular student in high school who was instead likely held back by his loyalty and friendship with Morgan.

But apparently Morgan had stood by Chuck after his expulsion from Stanford. Like Ellie, Sarah could forgive and overlook a lot from someone so loyal. Granted, Chuck had not recovered well from that experience and it was possible that Morgan welcomed him back to a life of mediocrity with such enthusiasm that Chuck had been unable to break away from the one friend who had stood by him. Realizing his potential could be seen as leaving his one loyal supporter behind and Sarah could appreciate how that could be hard for him - Chuck being the very definition of loyal to a fault - but something seemed to have awoken within Chuck recently. She wasn't vain enough to realize that it had a lot to do with her.

She has seen bravery to the point of foolishness, resourcefulness, and extreme dedication to the completion of missions in which he honestly had no business participating. Outside of those missions she had seen a combination of kindness, charm and a sense of humor that she had only ever seen in one other person.

That combination, especially the easy, disarming charm was a hallmark of her own father's persona while working a major con. But where, for her father, it was a carefully designed facade meant to distract a mark from his true intentions, for Chuck it was a state of being.

He was all the best things that she had once admired about her father. Before she realized it was all a lie.

As a child she hid from the disappointment of that realization by convincing herself that those traits did not exist. That no one was kind or charming or funny unless there was something in it for them. Then she met Chuck. And began to realize that wasn't true of everyone she had ever met - including her father - just everyone before Chuck. That there was at least one person who was kind and sweet just because it made him happy to make the people he cared about happy.

Laughter came easily in his presence - something that had been almost entirely absent from her life since she was recruited. Maybe even before. Even after a momentary panic over Morgan's description of Act Three of an 'evening of Morgan' as 'getting his fix', her amusement quickly returned when she realized that Morgan was referring to fireworks. She even found herself buying in to this incredibly normal evening and Morgan's own brand of enthusiasm over the smallest pleasures going as far in her binding with Morgan as to seal it with a high five.

Morgan may be odd but his enthusiasm and quirky humor seems to be just what Chuck needs to remain grounded and she could accept that. Tolerate it, as Ellie had once described it. And she came to a realization about the strange young man that Ellie had implied as well. She was relatively confident that Morgan would never knowingly betray Chuck in any way.

As strange as their relationship seemed to her, Morgan worships Chuck and probably always has. Puts him on a pedestal. Thinks he can do no wrong as she had once thought of her father.

And if her own history provided any sort of lesson, no matter how warranted it may seem, that is always a dangerous thing.

.

* * *

.

Act Two: The Agent

Scene One: Stakeout

.

Chinatown, Oct 14, 2007 8:35 pm

.

'An Evening of Morgan' had ended prematurely when Chuck had flashed on a kitchen worker's tattoo and identified her as China's top spy. Never known to operate in the U.S., with no photographic record and a history only compiled via reputations and conjecture, only Chuck could possibly have identified Mei-Ling Cho. They had been given the go-ahead to conduct surveillance tonight to determine the reason for her presence and had followed her here from the Bamboo Dragon as she followed a local businessman.

Sarah and Casey had spent the last twenty minutes or so avoiding Mei-Ling while scouting the building and watching guests arrive and their associated protocols for gaining entry. They assumed that Mei-Ling was doing the same thing, planning her approach, and Chuck had indicated over comms that he thought she was here for an assassination and neither were in a position where they could converse with him about it.

She left Casey in position watching the door and came back to the van to ensure Chuck was still safe. Both spies hoped that Chuck would be more inclined to listen to their instructions if they came from her. She checked her surroundings, silently opened the door and slid in behind him, smiling to herself as she watched him drumming on the steering wheel with a pair of still-in-the-wrapper chopsticks in each hand and singing along to what must have been the stakeout mix he had mentioned earlier.

She didn't want to startle him but no longer had much choice. He jumped when she reached out and lightly touched his shoulder. "Jeez, Sarah! Do you make any sound when you move?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Sorry, force of habit." and she perked her ears up to the final refrains of Rockwell's _Somebody's Watching Me_ playing from Chuck's iPod and grinned as she exclaimed "Hey, I know this one!"

"I tried to tell you, there's some good stuff on here. I thought Casey might appreciate 'CIA Man' at least..."

The song had changed as Sarah felt the need to warn Chuck not to antagonize the NSA agent. "Do not call him CIA Man if you value your life. He's not a fan of The Agency. But you said you thought she was here for an assassination?"

"She-"

"Key your mic so Casey can hear," Sarah interrupted. Chuck did so and continued.

"Yeah, so, Mei-Ling was over by that ladder," and he gestured toward the back wall of the building. "She was checking those Glocks Casey mentioned earlier with a distinctly Casey-like gleam. I got a better look at them and I flashed. They're Chinese army-issue pistols but there were some links to her prior missions. I think she's here to assassinate the guy in the wheelchair. The one Casey said was some local business big wig."

"You sure?" came Casey's voice in both their ears.

"Yeah, I'm-" Sarah nodded to his mic again and he clicked the transmit key. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure. You know, locked away in the brain here. I mean, I'm not bragging. The intersect's doing all the heavy lifting. But follow the bread-crumbs and I'm seeing assassination."

Sarah keyed her own mic to transmit to Casey what she was saying directly to Chuck and Chuck heard it in stereo with a slight echo of delay between the two. "Okay, we can't wait for back up or the local cops. By the time they get here, Mei-Ling or Ben Lo Pan may be dead or both."

Sarah and Chuck locked eyes as Casey's voice came through both of their earwigs, talking through the possibilities as though trying to convince himself. "Mei-Ling could be a small part of a larger operation. We need her alive. We want to find out what she knows. We catch her, the chinese spy has a lot we'd love to hear. All right, chuck, pull the car around front. Walker, get back in position."

Sarah smiled at Chuck and wished he had detected the same 'Good job' she had interpreted from Casey's monologue as he reacted to the instructions. "What? Around the front? Then what do I do?"

Sarah moved to leave saying "Stay in the car." and heard Chuck's muttered reply as he started the engine and turned the volume back up.

"My four favorite words."

She recognized that tone but thought it strange coming from Chuck. It was as though he were an agent who had been told to sit out a mission when he thought he could contribute. "You did good Chuck but we'll take it from here," she offered before she perked up her ears again. "I know this one too!"

"Well, I've been skipping around. I thought we'd all be in the van. The overall effect is lost. But my biggest concern at the moment is wondering whether you would recognize any songs from after we were born. We'll have to get you caught up somehow although it IS true that there really aren't enough songs with effective use of hand claps."

Though she was a little embarrassed by the fact that she did have a huge gap in her knowledge of popular music and puzzled by the mention of 'hand claps', Daryl Hall and John Oates were cooperating with perfect timing to emphasize Chuck's point as a chorus was coming up. Chuck turned around in his seat to stare into Sarah's eyes and mouthed along with the song 'Private Eyes' followed by a single hand clap and then 'they're watching you' followed by a double hand clap before belting out "...they see your ev'ry moooove".

She tried unsuccessfully to suppress her grin but her face betrayed her and Chuck was pleased that she seemed to find his antics at least mildly amusing. She regained her composure with a small, tight-lipped cough and offered a very dry response with a hint of a smile still on her lips "We'll have to discuss this hand clapping thing more fully at a later date. Mei-Ling's been doing recon but we need to get inside before she makes her move. I need know that you are going to stay put." At that she looked pointedly at Chuck.

"Really? Is that why you really came back out to the van? Was it necessary to come back out here to tell me that?"

"Based on recent experiences? Yes, it was the very definition of 'necessary''.

Chuck just shrugged and pointed at her with both index fingers as he exaggeratedly but silently mouthed another "...they see your ev'ry moooove".

"Chuuuuck..." God, he loved when she drew his name out like that. Especially the way she clicked the 'K' at the end. It was almost worth being reprimanded for whatever he did to get her to say it.

"Fine, I'll stay put. Barring calamities of an unforeseen nature." He knew she was telling him not to get involved under any circumstances but he also knew he would never sit idly by if Sarah...or Casey...were in some kind of trouble. He had no idea what he would do about it but they both knew their definitions of 'calamity' in this context were more than a little different.

"Thank you." She knew there was always a possibility of him getting into some kind of trouble - he was a magnet for it - but if he would at least try to stay safe she could breathe a little easier. She slid the door open and began to step out backwards when he called to her making her stop and look back to him.

"Sarah?"

"Yeah?"

He hesitated as though uncertain whether he should say anything before rambling through it "I know you're, like...well, _you_. But, umm, just...be careful?"

"Um...Sure." She was moved by his concern and she leapt back into the van in one fluid movement, snaked a hand toward Chuck's lap quicker than he could follow and pulled it back just as fast. She winked at him when she popped the now cold shrimp she had retrieved into her mouth before closing the van door.

She licked her fingers as she walked away not realizing Chuck was intently watching her do so and decided it was pretty tasty. Before she rounded the corner she looked back at the van.

She hadn't known how to react to that. Most people she had worked with never bothered to say 'Be careful' and those who did said it out of habit rather than out of any true concern. He was such an open book she could see that he was both worried she would be somehow insulted by his concern and genuinely worried about her safety.

She could see him through the windshield as the double pointer fingers re-emerged. As cute as it was, she really hoped that wasn't going to be an ongoing thing. She simultaneously grinned and rolled her eyes as she saw him mouth '...they're watching you...' followed by the double hand clap he had demonstrated earlier and when he returned her smile with one of his own she allowed herself a minor breach of protocol by acknowledging him, raising her left hand and wiggling two fingers at him in a tiny wave.

He waved back as he put the van in gear and started to pull around the building as she rounded the corner to rejoin Casey.

.

* * *

.

Act Two: The Agent

Scene Two: Shades of Grey

.

Courtyard, Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Oct. 15, 2007 8:10 am

.

Of course, he hadn't stayed in the van and they had all misread the situation. It was unfortunate that their actions had helped Lo-Ping and his men escape with the Chinese agent's brother but there wasn't much to be done for it now. Chuck had tried to help an elderly man in a wheelchair and ended up helping the bad guys get away with their hostage. Casey had suggested they pick up a cub scout uniform and give him a fake 'Assisting the Elderly' merit badge and Sarah had almost gone along with it.

Seeing how much Chuck was still beating himself up over his mistake made her glad that she talked Casey out of it. Chuck was clearly beside himself with guilt but it was Mei-Ling who had gone outside of channels but Sarah was just relieved that Chuck hadn't been hurt and was glad to be done with the whole situation.

"I know how you feel. It was hard for me too when I first started. But the truth is, we can't save everyone, Chuck."

She had been trying to reassure him. She had once been as hopeful and idealistic as Chuck is. She had thought that explaining it to him rationally and objectively would help him accept that there was nothing they could do. She thought that he only needed to be shown the infinite shades of grey between the black and the white and he would accept what she and Casey and any other agent knew. Some battles simply weren't worth fighting.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

Since she had known him - when he wasn't questioning mission details or intel - which happened too frequently for her to claim she had any degree of control over him - he had looked at her as though she could do anything. But the pedestal on which he had put her was being chipped away. He had seen through the super agent facade and the look he gave her when she tried to get him to accept the fate of Mei-Ling's brother simply broke something inside of her.

She wasn't infallible or indestructible. His disappointment in her made her feel ridiculously small.

It wasn't her fault; it was simply the way things were. How they _are_.

She tried to convince herself that any disappointment in her was Chuck's own fault for holding her to such a ridiculously high standard. But she liked that someone thought so highly of her. Liked that _he_ thought so highly of her. Liked that he wouldn't accept 'acceptable losses' or allow a stranger to suffer due to his mistake and wished she still had such conviction in long abandoned principles.

But she was clearly the wrong person to put that kind of faith in. The last such idealist she had known had betrayed her and their team. She had finally accepted idealism as her father had once described it: foolishness. They were all, herself included, living proof that you shouldn't put people on pedestals.

They'll only disappoint you.

.

* * *

.

Act Three: Ellie

Scene One: Those Who Stay

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Oct. 16, 2007 7:00 pm

.

He was naive and foolish and trusting and optimistic.

In a single word, he was amazing.

Maddeningly so, since her role as his protector forbade her encouraging his selfless behavior.

She was sure he had been just as worried about Casey and Mei-Ling as he was about her but once again, this crazy, untrained civilian reluctantly sucked into her shadowy world had refused to save himself when ordered and instead found a way to save the day.

Tailing their vehicle when she and Casey were captured by Lo-Pan's men despite being ordered to disengage. Distracting Lo-Pan's men with the same fireworks he had cautioned Morgan against buying. Sneaking into the kitchen to release them from the freezer, rescuing them again. Not to be overlooked was that all this had been part of a deal he had suggested and made while he was held at gunpoint to turn China's top covert operative. And ultimately they had saved the brother that Sarah herself had told him couldn't be saved. He made uncompromising idealism seem possible. He had even managed to smooth things over with Ellie.

Sarah was pleased that Ellie had invited her. She wanted to see for herself what an October Mother's Day was all about. She was slightly disappointed that Chuck seemed surprised to see her.

"Ellie invited me. She, uh..." Sarah offered as she timidly peeked around Chuck to wave to Ellie. Sarah was delighted to see Ellie smile at her and wave back "...insisted that I come. So, uh, Mother's Day?"

Chuck welcomed her in and offered an explanation of one of the siblings' many unconventional traditions. "Yes. Mother's Day, that's right. You don't really know... Mother's Day is the anniversary of the day our mom left us. Our dad was here, but he was never really _here_, so now every year, we celebrate the day we learned how to take care of ourselves."

Her disappointment that he hadn't been the one to invite her was replaced by delight at the acceptance he showed anytime he shared these personal stories. And she loved to hear him tell them but she hadn't expected this. This was an important part of who he was. Their mother had left them as children. Their father wasn't much better it would seem but she didn't want to pry at those details just now. No wonder he reacted so poorly to the betrayals of his best friend and his girlfriend five years ago. Expulsion from Stanford seemed secondary to their betrayal.

Everyone left him. Everyone but Ellie and Morgan.

She had chosen one parent over the other. It wasn't the same. Or perhaps it was the same for her mother. She had never fully considered what it must be like to be the one who is left behind.

"I try to pull my weight around here but..." he sighed before continuing. "I work at a retail store and she and Devon are doctors so you can imagine how that works out. She's always sacrificed for me. That's why I wish... I wish I wasn't just some drop out who had to go back to his summer job for the past four years."

"Why did you? And what's changed?"

"You know that Stanford didn't end well. I had everything tied up in that idea of what I was going to be. I thought I had the world on a string. I was actually being picky about interviews and offers. I had two offers in hand but - when I was expelled - I didn't even try to talk them out of pulling them. I decided to reassess for a while. Figure out how I might finish my degree or what to do next, then I had an install way up in Monterey for some guy who liked what I did in his Santa Barbara place so much he demanded me. I drove the rest of the way back up to Stanford to see my girlfriend because I hadn't been able to get a hold of her for a few weeks."

"Jill?"

"Yeah. She wouldn't even see me at first. Sent her roommate, Shari, out to deal with me. She finally came to the window but Shari spilled the beans about Jill and Bryce."

"I'm sorry."

"You know what? She made her choices. The first one was not me. And I get it based on what happened. I wish she would have trusted me but she didn't. And after that, well, why not Bryce? I don't know what happened with him and me but it wouldn't have hurt any less with anyone else. Not really. Its not worth worrying over any more. But you asked me what's changed? And, honestly, I think I just realize now that I can do... I don't even know... Things. Important things. Like what we did today."

"Turn a top enemy spy?"

"No. Well, yeah, but not really. Save her brother. And save anyone that Alahi guy could have hurt. And, you keep telling me, the intel I pull out of the dailies, that helps people too."

"It does," Sarah replied to his implied question about his worth. "Casey and I make operational recommendations based on your findings."

"Well, I know it's not the same, but when we do get this thing out of my head I think I'd like to find some way to make a difference like that. Well, maybe not like that but I started out planning to make a buttload of money and play video games in a bathrobe all day but, maybe... maybe I can do something more."

"I think I missed my calling. Shoulda been a therapist. You seem happy."

"Yeah, well not exactly happy. At least not with the _whole_ situation. Maybe a little excited. But its like you said, I cant tell them what we do but its a good thing. I mean, look at Ellie and Devon. They save lives every day. When they're done with their residencies they'll broaden that and Ellie will be able to pursue her research and do god knows what. It's a lot to live up to but maybe I'm just reconsidering what successful looks like. I just want her to be proud of me. We act like our Mother's Day is this sort of personal Independence Day but she did a lot to keep us together. I would never say this to her because it would be all weird but she became my parent when I needed her to. She had no one. That's why this was so important for me to be here."

Several voices were swimming in her head. Her own concerns about sharing too much, getting too close, and upsetting the status quo. Carina's advice to bide her time, stay close until the situation changed. Mei Ling's interesting if cryptic comments about sacrifice and greatness. The greatness she thought she might have just seen the first sprouts of and the sacrifice, well the sacrifice that would be necessary for her to stay close.

"Chuck. I'm sure she's proud of you no matter what but - I know it doesn't feel like it sometimes and things might not change for a while - but I'm going to do everything I can so you have that chance."

She had started out thinking this would be a temporary assignment. And it still was but the most important thing she could do was whatever it took to stay here and protect this annoyingly idealistic man as long as she could. Keep him safe as long as she could, hopefully until he could be free to realize his new perception of success. She only hoped she would be allowed to stay as long as he needed her.

.

* * *

.

Act Three: Ellie

Scene Two: Those Who Leave

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence; Oct. 16, 2007 7:10 pm

.

For weeks now she thought the miracle was that he simply was the way he was. This bright shining example of how people ought to be toward one another. She now thought that remaining fundamentally that same person after these abandonments - if understandably a little more guarded about who he really trusted - was the real miracle. It made her realize how much she had really been asking of him when she asked him to trust her. And how much it meant to her that he did seem to trust her. Or at least trust her more than she had any right to expect. And she marveled at how brightly he would shine if he hadn't been subjected to these experiences.

Ellie's protectiveness made sense to her now. She was as much a mother to Chuck as she was a sister. Maybe more a mother than a sister. And Morgan had been there for Chuck though that difficult time and again after Stanford. These two people had made it possible for Chuck to survive relatively intact to this point in time. When he would be asked to do impossible things and deliver. When he would be told to walk away or stay in the car and refuse to take the safe way out. When she would be assigned to protect him and forced to wonder when she had conceded defeat rather than hold on to her own idealistic view of the world.

And Ellie - with her openness and kindness and fierce protectiveness - quickly becoming the most amazing woman Sarah had ever known - had chosen to include her in this remarkable group. Despite her frequent protestations about Morgan she had apparently even saved his job by crediting him on some purchases she had made in some sales competition at the Buy-More. Sarah had spent years of her life honing herself into the perfect agent so she could right the wrongs of the world but had become a puppet. She, the CIA super agent, the woman Chuck looked at as superhuman, felt unworthy of membership in this exclusive club. Unworthy but welcome.

She watched Ellie gracefully orchestrate the simple act of setting the table and welcoming her guests and Sarah wondered a great many things about the eldest Bartowski sibling. About the girl who had become the de facto matriarch of a tiny, broken family far too young. Wondered about the things she must have sacrificed - the things she must have done - to protect her brother. Wondered how she had managed that feat and still become what she had become. She wondered if she could have been as strong as that as a teenager and knew she would not and had not. Wondered if their roles were reversed if she could have raised a brother and run a household and managed something as impressive as to become a doctor. She suspected she would have been incredibly bored with it all and run away at the first opportunity. Ellie had put the work in - made the sacrifices - and now had everything she deserved.

Chuck and Morgan were playing video games and Morgan had been very effectively managed when he had proposed a movie after dinner and Sarah had requested the original _Star Wars_, sharing a knowing smile with Ellie.

Morgan had comically dropped his jaw before declaring that Sarah had thoroughly embraced the spirit of 'an evening of Morgan's day' an unwelcome portmanteau which was quickly shouted down by the two siblings as a distinct party foul. He then pushed for the full trilogy marathon - which Sarah had not bargained for. Ellie vetoed that idea but accepted something called 'A New Hope'.

Sarah took the opportunity to further ingratiate herself into Chuck's world and offered to help Ellie. She was afraid that Ellie would protest but apparently she was just as keen to talk to Sarah.

"I see you've learned to manage the bearded buffoon."

"Learn-_ing_," she replied. "And you invited him."

"Well, we bonded over stereo equipment and missing Chuck."

"I'm sorry I've kept him so-"

"Hey, that's not what I meant. I invited you too! It's a good thing. I miss him but it's a good thing."

"So, he told me a little about Mother's day..."

"It's not really that big of a deal. We took each of each other."

"Yeah? He took care of you? How old was he when your mom left? Your dad? Whose idea was it to call it Mother's Day instead of Sibling's Day or Kid's Day?"

"It's no biggie. Anyone would have done it." Sarah doubted that. Chuck was four years younger and Ellie had been not quite eleven when their mother left. Barely sixteen when their father disappeared. Sarah had looked it up in Chuck's file but there was one thing strangely missing.

"And how'd you get around Social Services?"

"Chuck was a good kid. Did good in school. Had great attendance. They were so backed up that they came sniffing around a few times but they never really opened a case."

And, Ellie didn't share, they moved around. A lot. Fled their childhood home to the Grimes house first when someone from Social Services first came calling, hoping against hope that their father would return any day. It was just Bologna and Morgan then. Finding Morgan going through her clothes had - regrettably - colored her perception of him to this day and led to the first of many moves to shared rooms with older friends, many of which lasted only a few months.

Sarah knew all this anyway. Ellie had her permanent mailing address set as the Grimes household but her checking account had hits for utility bills all over town. Unless she was some sort of modern day gas and electric Robin Hood it painted a pretty clear picture. Chuck had never missed more than a sick day or two of school.

"And I'm sure you got accepted to lots of schools..." Sarah knew this was true. All eight to which Ellie had applied.

"UCLA has a great program and great hospital. And it's very convenient."

"Mmm-Hmm. I'm glad you had it so easy and got into such a convenient school. I see you, Eleanor. You deserve your own day. You raised an amazing guy."

Ellie dipped her head to hide the strange combination of pride and embarrassment currently ruling her facial features and Sarah noticed when an additional facet of sadness crept into the mix. She hadn't meant to bring up the bad times - only to express her appreciation - both admiration and gratitude - at her choice to shelter a young Chuck from such things not to dwell on them in a way that made the other woman relive the worst of it. She realized, even if inclined to share, she would have a similar reaction if discussing her own past. She was actually relieved herself when Ellie redirected the conversation.

"What about you? Chuck's been a different person lately. A little scatterbrained which you should take as a compliment. He hasn't even mentioned Jill since his birthday that I know of. This radiologist I know, Kristine, was kinda into him until he started down the Stanford death spiral. She went to Stanford too which - in retrospect - may have been a mistake. I thought maybe the whole incident cured him of dwelling on Jill but now I have a new theory."

"Actually, he just did a minute ago," as if to disprove Ellie's point. "Said she made her choices and she's not worth worrying about any more."

Ellie looked positively about to burst.

"What?" Sarah asked, completely missing the subtext. She tried to redirect the conversation even as she decided to fish for even more information. "Surely he's dated since?"

"Not really. There was one girl, Kayla. Couple of years ago, I guess. Chuck set up some electronic thingy at her club and she was mostly into musicians but she gave him her number. They hooked up kinda fast. She was kinda wild but she was nice. They were never really boyfriend - girlfriend. Chuck said she couldn't commit and they broke up. Not that they were really together anyway. I, uhh...never told him but I went down there and confronted her one night."

"Oh god, Ellie. I can guess how that went over."

"And you'd be right. But she told me what I needed to know," Ellie paused and waited for Sarah to gesture vaguely to continue. "That she really liked him - more than she wanted to admit to him - but couldn't commit to someone who was constantly obsessing over how another girl had hurt him and waiting for her to do the same. She thought it was more recent and didn't want to be his rebound. So, I see you Sarah Walker."

"What do you mean?"

"You just said that he's only mentioned Jill once and that was to say that she made her choices. Seems he's found someone - not a rebound - that he doesn't think about all those awful things when he's with her."

Sarah was saved by a booming "Honey, I'm home!" as Devon entered with a bouquet of flowers. Ellie rushed over to greet him as he explained that he got someone to cover the remainder of his shift and came home for what he - always one to call a spade a spade - referred to as 'Ellie Day'.

Sarah was caught a little off guard by Ellie's observation. Chuck hadn't fixated on Jill, even vaguely. That may have something to do with the nature of their relationship - that it wasn't really what it appeared to be to everyone else - but she reflected that he may have been about to say something over dinner that first night and consciously set thoughts of his ex aside. Could he possibly have been so interested in her that night that he started to move past something that had haunted him for over four years?

As she watched the two friends setting up what appeared to be a game called Halo - with communications between players she would have to ask him about at some point - she pondered what that might mean, if anything, about how he saw her.

Ellie looked back at Sarah and smiled as she caught her glancing back to her brother who hadn't left the couch, greeting Devon from his seat. The man everyone except Ellie called Captain Awesome and who obviously adored Ellie beyond measure. In that smile Sarah was surprised to find that she now understood what Ellie thought she saw when she watched her look at her brother.

All that was missing from Ellie's life was to see her brother reach his potential. She had been salutatorian of her high school class while providing for herself and her brother in temporary homes. She had somehow done well enough in her college studies to be accepted to medical school. Most of that was done while somehow providing for herself and Chuck while he finished high school. She sent him off to Stanford on a path toward success only to welcome him back three and a half years later shattered and broken.

Now Ellie sees the same thing Sarah sees. Something has awakened in him. Ellie is no fool but Sarah realizes that Ellie foolishly thinks she had something to do with that awakening. That her presence in his life is an indication that Chuck has rediscovered some of his former potential but she knows it's all him. A casual observer would think he has fought his destiny every step of the way but when the chips are down - when it really matters - without any special training or even confidence in his abilities - he finds a way to do what must be done.

Ellie kept looking at her with that small smile all night. Through dinner and even as she had nestled in to Chuck's side to watch the movie. She had smiled when the FBI warning came on to the screen and all three boys said in unison "copying movies is wrong".

Sarah looked up at Chuck only to have him whisper conspiratorially, "One of the few perks of working at a Buy More. Don't tell the government."

Chuck and Morgan clearly knew the movie inside-out and traded lines and obscure trivia. At one point early in the movie, Morgan mumbled in a very defeated fashion "I wish he hadn't messed with that."

Sarah's natural response was unfiltered. "Well, the smuggler guy should have just shot him thought he table with that canon. That's what I would have done. I mean, once green guy made it clear he was there to kill him." she quickly amended once all eyes turned to her. She had of course recognized smuggler guy as both Han Solo and Indiana Jones but didn't expect the attention of the room. "What?"

She also hadn't expected Morgan's enthusiastic response and insistent high five with a "That's what I'm talking about! Han shot first!"

She and Ellie shared a glance and Ellie mouthed the words 'nice one' as though it had been a planned outburst and simply beamed at her as though she actually were Chuck's girlfriend and has drawn him out of his shell.

But Ellie doesn't know the truth - the extent to which Chuck has become something more - something he may have always been meant to be - how much more he can become despite the fact that to her eyes he is still working at his fall back job. The possible truth of Mei Ling's observations.

All Ellie knows is that Chuck is finally taking a chance on dating a pretty girl that seems to make him happy and that's enough for her.

Ellie looks at Sarah as though she has rescued her dreams. As though she is the missing piece that will make all of her sacrifices pay off in every way she dreamed.

But she must make her own sacrifices to maintain the status quo until the status quo changes. To see him through to that greatness within him. And in the end, once he is somehow free of this thing and no longer needs her protection, she would likely not be free to make any other choice for herself.

In the end, she is just another person who will abandon him.

.

* * *

043: Fate Calculating

* * *

.

Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; Oct. 16, 2007 3:30 pm

.

Chuck Bartowski was elated.

Despite all his missteps over the past couple of days he had saved a brother and sister caught up in the world of intrigue consisting of the Chinese Triad, the Chinese Ministry of State Security which he couldn't have named before he flashed, the NSA and CIA and all without anyone getting hurt - or at least killed - Mei Ling Cho, Sarah Walker and John Casey made an impressive fighting team.

He had tried to stay in the van. He really had. But like he told his handlers, he couldn't just stand by and watch when they were overcome by Lo Pan's security forces. To have a hardass like John Casey tell you to save yourself... How could you live with yourself if you did?

The way Sarah had looked at him - and Casey too but mostly Sarah so effortlessly beautiful in that jacket and gold-rimmed aviators - the approval of his actions saving the brother and turning the sister had made him incredibly proud. They may never see each other again but Mei Ling had saved him. Chuck thought to himself that he would do the same for Ellie and couldn't help but see Ellie in Mei-Ling. He thought that both Sarah and Casey seemed proud of him too and - when he thought of them and then thought of himself - it was hard to see why.

His sister had sacrificed so much for him and helped him through his doldrums after Stanford, his breakup with Jill, his betrayal by Bryce and the ensuing self-isolation he imposed from the world to avoid ever being hurt like that again.

Hiding at Buy More where he knew he wouldn't be challenged but barely able to support himself. His pitiful contributions to paying the rent and utilities, some months being told that just covering groceries was enough only to see Devon or Ellie come home having 'just grabbed a few things'. Only now, as an adult - or a self-absorbed, immature pre-adult he now realized - did he realize what lengths Ellie had gone to as a young woman to shield him from such practicalities of life for no reason other than to preserve his childhood since hers was lost.

Sure, he knew money was tight but he just figured it was the same everywhere. Wearing salvaged clothing and crashing wherever they could, him often just staying at Morgan's. He now realized how petulant he had been about what others had that he did not. His sacrifices we're limited to an allowance for comic books. One that Ellie provided. The fact that he had to watch others play arcade games and study their play and tactics before idly wasting one of his few quarters or tokens while Morgan usually had a roll of quarters.

For gaming consoles and computers he scavenged for junked ones. Studied their inner workings and rebuilt them to do what he desired. Bent them to his will.

By the time he left for college he was the best kept secret in the hacking world and used that knowledge to bend the Internet to his will. And for what? The satisfaction of moving a penny through supposedly secure accounts or renaming a file structure in a supposedly secure server - leaving all other cross-referencing and functionality completely intact - just to tell a crude joke. One of those clever ideas repurposed had earned him a scholarship to Stanford and when that ended badly, rather than becoming one of those unlikely success stories that defined Silicon Valley, he had curled up in a ball and hid from the world.

Chuck went to Big Mike's office to drop off his service sheet to maintain the cover of his service calls and read over the comments Mei-Ling had provided in an elegant, sprawling cursive hand. Now that he wanted to do something more with his life he was trapped by his strange circumstances. Still, if the best he could do was manage the situation in the best way he was able, then that is what he would do.

Mei-Ling's comments were carefully worded. He had never done something like this before but he figured it could be explained as him being proud of his work at his real-job-turned-cover so, before leaving it in the bin, he made a copy for himself. It was fairly innocuous, but coming as it did from an elite spy like Mei-Ling Cho it was extremely meaningful to him.

_Mr. Chuck Bartowski provided my family a great service. I would have been lost without him. And I owe him a great debt._

.

* * *

.

Abandoned Mall Parking Deck, Hawthorne, CA; Oct. 16, 2007 3:15 pm

.

Sarah watched Chuck walk away and couldn't have been more grateful that the former Chinese spy had read the situation correctly and waited for the discussion to be spies-only before mentioning certain details.

"So, my brother is to act as an informant for you and I am to be held for how long?" Mei Ling asked as the three agents watched the lanky, curly haired man who had beamed triumphantly at what the defecting agent had written on his survey get into the car that seemed an impossible fit for his long limbs. Mei Ling had an agenda of her own and it would not do to start throwing around words like 'hostage' at this stage.

Casey saw no need to sugarcoat the terms of Mei Ling's deal to aid her brother. "At least until he establishes that information pipeline. I'm sure your debriefing will take at least that long. Then you'll be monitored for the duration of our agreement. Whether its in a place of your own or in a hole is largely dependent upon how cooperative the two of you are."

"Your assistance was costly," the defector replied.

"You had to know what you were agreeing to," Sarah offered with, she was surprised to find, some sympathy. An enemy agent like Mei Ling - or herself if she were in the same situation - would not be allowed to walk freely and unmonitored anytime soon, if ever.

Chuck drove by in Nerd Herder #3 with a goofy smile and a wave thinking the three were just discussing what he would naively refer to as shop talk. Sarah and Casey watched the small vehicle pass and as Sarah returned the wave Mei Ling Cho watched Sarah and the thousands of possibilities etched on her face in the small smile she could not resist.

"I did not say it was a cost I was unwilling to pay. He does not know the details of this arrangement. Your friend," Mei Ling ventured nodding toward where the tiny car had just passed.

"There's lots of things he doesn't know," was Sarah's quiet response in a tone that was not lost on the other woman.

Sarah's phone rang at that moment and she held it up so Casey could see the number displayed.

"Told you she'd call you. She likes you. Help me load her in and I'll make sure I don't let her out until I'm at the drop off and have backup. It doesn't take two. I'll call it in and get everything cleared."

Sarah invited Mei Ling to sit in the rear of Casey's Crown Victoria and as she entered said simply "I'm glad your brother is OK."

Mei Ling slid into the center of the seat and held her hands in front of her, balled fists with wrists together as she responded "And I am glad your Chuck is unharmed."

As Sarah fastened the handcuffs to her wrist and reached under the seat for the anchor she knew was there and clipped a medium length chain between it and the handcuff chain. Sarah was somewhat in awe of the other agent's sacrifice for her brother. They both knew she would never truly be free but Sarah knew they had done the right thing by helping. "I uhh... I had my doubts about interfering but Chuck convinced me."

"He is a great man. Or will be. Greater than you yet know," and Sarah was somewhat intrigued by the sentiment but then Mei-Ling's voice changed to a rough whisper. "But you must keep him safe." Sarah had fastened the restraints around Mei Ling's ankles and looked up at her at mention of keeping Chuck safe. Mei-Ling looked into Sarah's eyes and Sarah could have sworn the whites of the other woman's eyes tinged green for a moment before she continued in that same low whisper. "Your future relies on his safety as much as his own future does. It is a great burden the things we deny ourselves for something more important than our own lives or happiness, is it not?"

Sarah and Mei Ling held each other's gaze until Casey interrupted "What's the hold up, Walker?"

"Almost done here!" Sarah bellowed in reply without fully looking away from Mei-Ling. Whatever trick of the light had made the white's of her eyes look anything other than white was now gone and the former Chinese spy softened her expression with a smile and a soft reassurance in her normal voice.

"Goodbye, Agent Sarah Walker of the CIA. Trust your instincts. It is unlikely that we will meet again."

Sarah was more disconcerted by the gaze and the softness in her voice than if she had tried to escape as she backed out of the passenger compartment and stood to face Casey. "You sure you don't need any help with her?"

"Go Walker. Don't keep her waiting. You know the moron's been in a tizzy over her."

Sarah had driven separately and redialed Ellie once she was seated in her own car.

"Hey, Ellie. I saw you just called, sorry I couldn't get to my phone quick enough." Sarah watched as Casey drove past and the two of them exchanged a wave, fingers only each with a palm on their respective steering wheels. Mei-Ling's face held that same strange smile as she drove past and the former Chinese agent offered a small nod.

"Sarah, hi. I'm sorry, were you in the middle of something?"

_Other than being utterly creeped out by a defecting Chinese spy?_ she thought. "Oh, no. Just at the mall. Juggling a few things." Sarah looked all around at the abandoned parking deck. All of that was technically true. She couldn't help it if no one else was at this particular mall or Ellie assumed she meant she was juggling something as tangible as shopping bags.

It was the adage she was raised on. _There are all kinds of ways to lie._

"Well, I was wondering. Are you working tonight?"

_I'm always working._ "No Ellie, no wieners tonight." She knew she had misspoke at Ellie's good natured laugh.

"Aww, Chuck will be so disappointed! But that's really TMI, Sarah."

"Ellie, I didn't mean-"

"I'm just playing, Sarah. God, you're so sweet. I just wanted to... Chuck and I are celebrating a sort of manufactured Bartowski family tradition - our version of Mother's Day - but I'm temporarily insane and I've expanded it to include Morgan..." Ellie sighed deeply "...and I was wondering - hoping, really - if you'd like to join us too?"

Sarah opted to table her questions about Mother's Day and continue the light hearted banter Ellie had started. "Another evening of Morgan? That's asking a lot, Ellie."

"Yeah, OK. Well,-"

"Ellie! I'm kidding. I'd love to come."

"Really?"

"Of course." Sarah was a little surprised by Ellie's enthusiasm.

"Awesome!" there was a brief pause while Ellie considered her own reaction before continuing. "Do _not_ tell Devon I said that. Eight o'clock. I'm looking forward to it. There's also a Halloween thing me and Devon do every year. Would you be up for a costume party?"

"Oh, wow. Costumes? I wouldn't know what to wear. Should me and Chuck do something? What was that thing you said he always wanted to be?"

Oh, Han Solo? And you could be Leia? That would be perfect! We'll just have to get him to abandon that tandem costume he and Morgan wear every year."

"I don't want to do anything to tick Morgan off, Ellie." It was true, it didn't serve her purpose of burrowing into Chuck's life to keep him safe to make Morgan more inclined to interfere. And Sarah was suddenly a little pissed that she had to consider such things rather than asking her boyfriend - _cover_ boyfriend - what he wanted them to go to a costume party dressed as.

"Let me see what I can do about Morgan. You see what you can do about Leia and Han costumes. Star Wars might be just the thing to move on from the costume they've worn since junior high."

"Such a time honored tradition! Not sure I should mess with that."

"No, please mess with it. I think it's time. Change is good, Sarah."

"OK, I'll let you do your thing and I'll see what I can do."

"Cool." Ellie's SoCal was showing. "I'll see you tonight, we can conspire some more."

Despite the fact that she now had to figure out just who the hell this Leia was, it had been a long time since a covert operation had made her smile.

.

* * *

.

Interstate 15, Northbound, Oct 16, 2007, 4:30 pm

.

It wasn't until they were nearing the outskirts of the city that Mei-Ling Cho spoke again. "How far are we traveling, John Casey?"

"Couple of hours."

"Do you wish to speak during our journey?" she asked cautiously.

"I'm not supposed to talk to a prisoner during transport."

"I understand. But I am most interested in speaking with you."

"Should've brought Chuck with us, then. He's the chatty one."

"Yes, he is most clever and amusing. But my purposes are not best served by speaking to him, though it does concern him. Perhaps I will speak and you will decide if anything I say is worthy of a response?"

A small, disinterested grunt was her only indication to continue if she desired.

"Do you want to know why I am considered top agent of the People's Republic of China?"

She took Casey's silence as a continued lack of objection.

"I have an ability that few can claim. My mother was an amazing woman. She was an uncommon beauty with even more uncommon green eyes. We lived in Beijing and my father often traveled on business. He was quite successful as he discussed his plans with my mother often. Successful enough to be blessed with two children and not overburdened by it. Businessmen from all over the city would come to her for her uncanny abilities."

Mei-Ling Cho smiled as her gruff, burly driver scoffed at that. She was hoping to catch him somewhat off guard. It was the only way she could hope to influence the events that depended so much on his choices and she hoped to guide him softly into the key point with a smoothly delivered story.

"Yes, you would think that was her trade but she was something much more coveted. A Suan Ming fortune teller. You Americans are not as accepting of such guidance but my mother was in great demand. Not all trade is government controlled and many of our most prominent businessmen sought her guidance. They paid her handsomely for her guidance and even more handsomely for denying her guidance to their rivals and they benefitted greatly as did our nation. Much of the early trade that has recently blossomed between our two nations was done on her advice.

"There were many such practitioners in the city with their Four Pillars and reading faces or palms. Their sticks and stars. As do most, my mother followed the Pillars, numerology, or so she said. When I was ten years old, she told me the truth. Her gift. As she asked for details of her clients' birth and consulted her charts she spoke with them about their plans and schemes. She could see in their faces when they held tightly to their secrets and such men and women were given mediocre advice and less than mediocre advice should they return and so on until they did not return.

"Those who spoke honestly, even of their intended wickedness, she could see the outcomes of their many alternatives as they described them. A ghostly green vision of their future selves' faces as they reacted to events not yet past. The image solidifying as plans were made more clear and the most likely outcomes became more pronounced. Not a certainty but a strong likelihood. The wicked she guided to ruin and the well-meaning to prosperity. Then, one day, one of these men who had risen to become a minister of our government came to see her. Then another. The second she feared straight away. They spoke at length and when the end of the week came, our father did not return. Then many men came to speak with my mother.

"Soon my brother and I were sent to a government school. We saw each other frequently but did not see my mother again. He was a skilled mathematician - numbers, you see. I was a promising gymnast but not promising enough to justify such a move and soon grew too tall to maintain such a ruse. Still, I proved to be very capable and bit aggressive in the protection of myself and my brother and they groomed me for a life a government service. I hid my knowledge from my peers. They were to become spies and I assumed this was true of me as well.

"I learned this when I was thirteen. The sight descended upon me and I could see all of their paths. And all of their deaths. My mother had told me that she had a powerful bond to the sight and it could only reside with one member of our family at a time. I knew if it were to pass to me that I would not see her again. As an agent, I could predict the actions and outcomes of my adversaries or my targets. It was a key to my success but I always called it intuition. You are the first I have told of my gift."

Casey's interruption was the only indication that he had heard any of that. "Bullshit. If you can see the future, why work with us? Why not stop your brother from being abducted in the first place? Why not know Lo Pan's house was a trap?"

"You could ask the same of my mother. Of why she did not take us and flee. Of why she did not know they would come for her. I did. In the quiet of the night when she could no longer answer. For many years. But the gift is not meant for ourselves. I have twisted it somewhat but I cannot see my own fate any more than I can see my own back as I try to follow myself through time. Not clearly, not in great detail. The closer the connection, the more - foggy - the vision. But I can see that of others and my training informs me how to act upon their fates.

"I saw my brother off at the airport and I only had a vague sense of his danger then. It is not as strong for those close to us. And when emotion rules, the sight is clouded. But agents like us, you and I and your Sarah Walker, we are trained to master our emotions. Even so, this sense grew and grew until the day he was taken. I had called due to my concern but he knew nothing of our the burden of the women of our family. I am sure I sounded quite deranged. As I am sure I sound to you now.

"Others are easier. Your Chuck and your Sarah, for example. They have much pain in them, and the potential for much more, but also hope for great joy, I wonder which will win out."

"And you, John Casey, you are blessed in your family but unaware of your blessings."

"That just proves you're full of shit, I don't have any family."

"There are many kinds of family, John Casey. Or there can be. The other driver, he called you 'Major'. I myself hold the rank you would call Captain though few know this. I then asked and he answered. What is your Marine Corps if not a family? What would you not do for one of those brothers - or now sisters - if needed?

"I cannot see all paths at all times. I am not a third daughter of a third daughter like my mother. But when I looked at your Sarah Walker I could see them all in her. I saw the many futures of her when I had a gun to Chuck's head in that stock room and again when she locked me into your vehicle. Sudden and clear. All in a flash. She would never be the same if that trigger were pulled, I may as well have pulled her soul from her body and cast it into the void while leaving her living as pull that trigger... I would never have harmed him having seen that. I can kill a man. But I cannot do that to a person."

She had never seen the fates of two people so endlessly intertwined. In every world they met, which was most, they defined each other - in love and loss, life and death, pain and joy - more than she thought possible. In the stock room she had seen the futures of Sarah Walker that would cease to exist if she had harmed him. When Walker loaded her into the car she saw something else. A crossroads over which neither Chuck Bartowsi nor Sarah Walker would have any control. And if John Casey went on to do what she perceived he likely would, to throw away one blessing, he did not deserve to know of the other.

"Well, Walker tends to get attached."

"I saw you too... His pro-tec-tor," she enunciated mockingly. "Ever stoic among all your future selves. And so that drama in front of the house - when we were captured - intrigued me, you tipped him off didn't you? What did you tell him?

"To run. To save himself."

"An interesting directive. I know better than to ask why but he is clearly important."

"He has an unorthodox approach. A gift. Like you claim to have."

"Yes, that would explain how you knew I had finally journeyed to your country. But I meant that he is important to you. You call him moron but he is not. You know this. It is not disdain you say this with. I believe Agent Sarah Walker is not the only one becoming attached."

"He's... One of a kind," Casey mused after a few moments of silence.

"You are a complicated man, John Casey of the NSA. Do you think he knows?"

"Knows what?"

It was then that Mei Ling locked eyes with John Casey in the rear view mirror in hopes of seeing some shift in the possible outcomes before revealing the knowledge she had been hoping to influence in payment of her debt to Chuck Bartowski.

"That you intend to betray him, of course."

"What are you-"

"I know that you are not driving me to one of your luxury resorts. Or even a pleasant home. I have not been to the United States of America but I am not ignorant of its geography. We are driving to the desert. Somewhere near the place known as Death Valley. I wonder if I will learn some lesser-known reason it is called that.

"Do you know why I have been careful never to come to the United States of America? It is because I knew the line of my life ended here. The line itself - even its length - is hard for me to see but I have always known that when I came here - knew days ago when I came for my brother - that I would not return to my homeland. Agent Sarah Walker was right; I knew what I was agreeing to. I suppose it is now up to you whether that line ends in a torture chamber over the coming days or surrounded by grandchildren on an elderly woman's deathbed whose name I do not yet know. Or whether you share with anyone else what I have shared with you today. I suppose I am at your mercy, John Casey."

"Not mine. I just follow orders."

"Ahh. Orders. I once followed them too. Look at me now," she raised her shackled hands so they were visible in the mirror.

"If you knew coming here would be the end of you, why would you come?" Casey asked.

"My own future may be hard to read and I could not quite see my brother's before he left, but - when he was taken - my brother's fates became clear. It was like a spike in my skull. If I stayed - if I did not defy - _orders_ \- I knew he would die. And I love him. Your Chuck helped save my brother. Convinced you to help me. I knew he was the key and I know of few ways to adequately repay him. My fate may be beyond your ability to sway. But his is not. Family, John Casey. What are the words of your Marine Corps? Always faithful?"

The possibilities had not changed much. John Casey was a good soldier. But the seed had been planted and when the time came she could only hope that it bore fruit. She had stared down the assassin and he had blinked. It was the best she could do and John Casey's next words informed her that he had understood exactly what she meant.

"I've changed my mind. No talking."

Major John Casey devoted his full attention to the road ahead. General Beckman had informed him that the Intersect project was already experiencing delays and there had been no further mention of managing the risks associated with the current civilian host once it was operational. He held out hope that the order would never come, knowing some breakthrough could mean it came at any moment and that absence of new orders meant the original directive stood not that it had all been forgotten. The biggest insight he got out of all this nonsense about knowing what he would do before the time came to do it was that it was unwise to get attached to the man he was protecting no matter how good and decent he seemed. Especially given that.

He didn't want to think about what was right and compare it to what was smart. Didn't want to think about the man he was protecting who seemed to find untapped reserves of courage and resourcefulness when he decided something was the right thing to do. Didn't want to think about what a colossal and unprecedented security risk that man's very existence represented. Didn't want to think about whether doing such a thing violated his principles in a way that made them impossible to hide behind when other orders he had followed were carried out.

His passengers's final words made such willful ignorance impossible.

"As I said, ever stoic," Mei-Ling observed again as she lay her head back against the head rest. Mei-Ling Cho, last daughter of her line, turned her face from the blue eyes of John Casey in the rear view mirror and watched the landscape change outside the window.

"As you wish, Major John Casey of the NSA," she sighed. "I am sure you have much to think about. As do I." When grass turned fully to sand she closed her eyes. Closed her eyes and tried to see a future not yet written.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Where did THAT come from? I have no idea! Chinese fortune telling is apparently called Suan Ming which literally translates to 'fate calculating'. Among the many methods, the most common - Bazi - deals with the 'Four Pillars of Destiny' - year, month, day and hour of birth. More astrology than fortune telling but used in conjunction with other methods. Sometimes you get caught in a research tornado - one with a twisty turny path you can't explain later - and this happens.

There is apparently a translation issue with the Chinese dialogue in the opening of this episode. I wondered why Mei Ling was warning her brother. How does she have any knowledge of his dealings? And if she had never set foot on US soil, why were they going to dinner? (This is the mistranslated line.) And hopefully no one is terribly disappointed that I followed the lead of the Schwedak and didn't bother to explain, other than a vague mention, WHY the Triad has decided Lee Cho must die. Or was being used as leverage. Just accept that he was going to be killed by the Triad. This is what I mean by the tactical aspects of this episode not standing up to scrutiny but it has never lessened my enjoyment.

I couldn't isolate the filming location for the parking lot scene though it's meant to be in downtown Burbank. There is a partially abandoned mall in Hawthorne but I don't think it has a multilevel parking deck...until now!

I'm usually all melodramatic and serious about the quotes I use but the funniest one I found regarding pedestals is from Dolly Parton: "After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep daddy away from her."

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!


	17. XVII: Every Day Above Ground

...in which Sarah contemplates the nature of Chuck's situation, a young Sarah broadens her skills...

Canon Reference: Episode 106 ('Sandworm')

Contents: Three chapters; the first (6,400 words) and third (4,800 words) are canonspansions (like that word? I just inventorated it) and the second (1,450 words) is flashback. The flashback scene will seem out of place until next installment (something I try to avoid with the 'installment' approach in addition to avoiding posting of tiny chapters like that when something more substantial is expected). That adds up to less than 13K words - there are some long notes at the end.

A/N: Lots of fun reactions to last chapter! I was careful not to make Mei-Ling's 'special ability' alter events too much. Just provide a nudge. There's a little mention of her here to clear up some misconceptions. I was surprised that so many thought I definitely killed her off. Her fate is no more clear here but there is some hope...

Structurally, we're going to start this one near the end of the episode but still cover a fair bit of that episode. 'Cuz "I'm just that slick". ("Great kid, don't get cocky...") Yes, I just quoted P!nk and Han Solo consecutively. In my mind, they are equally bad ass.

No one noticed (or noted) last time that I made Ellie eleven when their mother left. Since I keep Chuck four years younger than Ellie, that means Chuck was seven. Canon says two, possibly three, different things about this. Two data points say he was nine (or ten) and another says he was eleven. See end notes for details. Also see end notes for any Russian phrases not made clear with their context.

Thanksgiving: In keeping with my new practice of lagging my holiday commentary I wanted to tell everyone reading how much I appreciate their time and support. I was wary of sharing this story because it's neither blatantly fluffy nor hugely disruptive to canon. As I warned up front, it also tackles some messy tropes head on and is not an easy read in complexity, subject matter or general verbosity.

Frankly, I thought many would try it with mixed reception and few would follow it. As I cross 350 reviews and approach 100 story followers and a quarter million words I am just so pleased that almost everyone who has voiced an opinion finds it a worthwhile read. I am still trying to respond to everyone who reviews because I appreciate your time and kind words more than you can know. If I don't respond to you it's because I'm too busy writing the next installment! Thank you all for your support!

On a broader note, I hope everyone who observes Thanksgiving enjoyed their holiday with family and that everyone (regardless of holiday) appreciates their blessings and/or can find blessings in their lives despite their everyday or - in some cases - daunting troubles. For those with few blessings I wish you more and for those with many I encourage you to share of yourself with those less fortunate in whatever way you can.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Scarface_, a famous short story by W. W. Jacobs, the song 'The Weight of the World' by Editors, _Dune_ or _Star Wars_ (_Return of the Jedi_) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XVII - Every Day Above Ground

* * *

.

044: The Gilded Cage

.

Interstate 10, Eastbound, 20 miles west of San Bernardino, CA;

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 3:45 pm

.

Sarah Walker was riding shotgun in Casey's Crown Victoria as they pursued the unbalanced escaped weapons designer Chuck had identified Monday. The one who, based on the photographs, had killed two guards and injured his longtime handler to escape from Cinderblock Hell. It was that handler's approach to and dismissiveness toward the well-being of his asset that made her think about some of the realities of her current assignment that she had previously set aside.

The photos Casey had shared had been intended to demonstrate how dangerous Laszlo Mahnovski truly was but Sarah couldn't help but notice how bleak the accommodations were. She assumed that the government had been restricting Mahnovski's movements since he had completed his Ph.D., possibly before as they had restricted her movements while she attended language courses at college.

At some point they had completely detained him in a facility similar to the one from which he had escaped. Maybe the same facility. Maybe for the entire time.

Prior to that, she had just delivered - or rather left it to Casey to deliver - a defecting Chinese agent to a 'secure facility'. The same vague threat that had been hung over Chuck's head on that first night. It had been surprising to learn that such a facility was so nearby although it may not have been the final destination for Mei-Ling Cho. And may or may not one day be a facility that Chuck resides in or just passes through.

The mere idea that he could be taken so suddenly had led her to make a rash decision.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA;

Monday, October 29, 2007 8:30 pm

.

Sarah was looking out across the courtyard through Chuck's bedroom window. An interesting reversal of her recent approaches to the apartment often peeking in for reassurance that he was there. She had just seen him pass by and she was now blankly staring at the fountain tinkling in the moonlight while fretting over her present to him.

She had hoped it would be a nice little surprise and tie in with her plans for the Halloween party. Today's incident - Chuck randomly identifying a recently escaped weapons designer - had derailed her plan a little but she still hoped to pull it off with Ellie's help. When Sarah had arrived tonight, Ellie had said she had broached the topic of Chuck ditching the costume he usually shared with Morgan. Ellie said she would try again later and was giddy over the photo she had worked up.

She would say that the CIA produced the photo but in truth it had been her muddling through use of photoshop. She had acquired the foundational image from Field Support but superimposing Chuck's face and her own image had been up to her. She didn't want to expose Chuck's image to even her own Field Support. Her own image was from a timer shot on her own digital camera when she tried on her costume. Hopefully, the photo would plant the seed for Chuck to wear his.

But now she was doubly nervous because she had included a somewhat less desirable surprise with the picture's frame. Having just delivered Mei-Ling to what could loosely be described as a bunker and being informed that Laszlo Mahnovski had 'escaped' from what could also likely be described as a bunker she had acquired the device. She had been weighing whether it was imposing further upon Chuck's privacy when she had realized how easily it would fit inside the frame. Given the recent brushes with detainment of high-value individuals and the convenient opportunity she had made a rash decision out of what could only be described as panic.

It wasn't even a bug, she had justified to herself. It just detected when multiple heat sources were present and any audio beyond a certain volume. If a grab team took Chuck she would be alerted to their presence or if he cried out she would be alerted and, hopefully in either case, would be near enough to react. Hopefully they wouldn't immediately trash the watch having likely used it themselves. It wasn't ideal but it was better than newspaper on the floor and tin cans stacked against the door. After it sent the alert to her phone...she had no idea what she would do next.

Casey had been right the first night: the CIA did get the best toys. Hers wouldn't show up in one of Casey's sweeps because it was completely passive and would not transmit until one of those triggers occurred. Or she activated it remotely. _Then_ it would be a bug. She would just have to resist the urge to listen in on Chuck. She knew Casey had been tasked with that particular intrusion into what remained of Chuck's life.

She didn't like it, and didn't like that they weren't telling him. As conflicted as she was over running surveillance on Chuck, her superiors failure to notify him of their own orders for surveillance somehow helped her justify her own alert system. Luckily, Chuck's own excitability over today's events made him far less likely to pick up on her nervousness over either her costume idea or the surveillance she had hidden within it.

She was stirred from her thoughts when he burst into the room and she turned to face him. "Hey, who is this Laszlo character? He just ID'd me as an agent," he began.

"Relax," Sarah reassured him. "We're looking into him. You did the right thing."

"I did - I didn't do anything. I just flashed on the guy!"

Sarah felt the difference in him. He was as agitated over the fact that he wanted to do something about the situation but didn't know what to do. But he had made the right decision. His own safety was paramount. "You followed protocol, and I'm going to check in with you first thing in the morning."

Sarah hoped this person wasn't too dangerous and wanted to check with Casey whether anything new had been learned. She didn't want to let on about her concerns about the incident possibly driving an extraction without her knowledge and had moved to leave quickly - forgetting her original intention with the picture frame, or deliberately avoiding the issue in case he thought it was foolish - when he stopped her.

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. Wait, hold on," Chuck pleaded and Sarah stopped to look back at him with what she though may have been a slightly confused expression.

Chuck struggled for a moment to find the words before continuing. "Look, if it's cool with you, could you hang out for a little while?"

This time she was certain her confusion showed on her face and it prompted Chuck to explain.

"Look, Awesome and Ellie think that I'm kind of getting lucky in here, and I wouldn't want to disappoint." Just as her mind latched onto the idea of who would be most disappointed by Chuck not getting lucky he clarified unconvincingly. "Them."

If she hadn't been so blindsided she would have realized how adorable his hesitance was. Maybe she noted it anyway. But she was also a little shaken by the fact that she had momentarily forgotten their cover and he had been the one to correct her behavior. And the idea of either of them - or more accurately both - getting lucky in here left her not really knowing how to reply. "Oh. Um, wh...uh, how long do you want me to stay?"

Her cringe at the awkwardness of her own question was short-circuited by the immediate precision of his response. "Forty-eight minutes and two seconds?"

If his goal was to keep her off-balance, it was working. The fact that it was just his nervousness was sweet and his clarification didn't really clarify anything at all. "Arcade Fire's first album. It's like an auditory aphrodisiac. You're not really ready for it. Yeah, I'm..."

Auditory aphrodisiac?! Yeah, she definitely wasn't ready for that and it sounded like a really bad idea. Or a really good idea with bad ramifications. Chuck was luckily fiddling with his stereo while she sat on the edge of his bed and tried not to think about the connotations of any kind of aphrodisiac. Luckily he was just as distracted by his own thoughts - which she thought might be along the same lines - and that _so_ wasn't helping - as he settled on a particular song.

"Okay, here we go," he said as the room filled with a sweet, plaintive song that she let wash over her and he sat with his back to her. He inhaled as if to say something but then slumped in silence for several seconds before asking "What - why were you waiting in my room, anyway?" stirring her from her trance.

"Oh, well, I wanted to surprise you," she said as she lifted the frame from Chuck's bedside table and showed it to him. "It's, uh, us at Comic Con. What do you think?"

"It's, it's great...but we've never actually been to Comic Con, have we?" she was as deflated by that reaction as she was buoyed by the yearning of his next comment. "Wow, we...we actually look like a real couple."

It shouldn't be this hard. They were in this together. Or as together as they could be and remain in it together at all. And she said all that she could to that effect. "Well, we are a real couple; we're just a different sort of a couple."

"That we are."

He just stared at the photo, thinking thoughts she didn't dare guess. And she closed her eyes and listened to the song that was playing.

_Every little piece of your life, will mean something to someone._

"This is nice," she said quietly, rousing Chuck from his thoughts. He almost seemed surprised she was still there. That she hadn't vanished into thin air. "Sad, but nice." she commented. Thinking about all the pieces of her life that had brought her here. What they meant to her. What they meant to Chuck even if he could never know the details.

She didn't believe in serendipity or fate in any of its forms but all those things had brought her here. All those things would - hopefully - keep him here. As if it were some kind of Monkey's Paw deal she had gladly made to be here to protect this man not knowing up front how far she would have to descend into madness and death in order to follow the road that brought her here.

"It's like musical poetry. The music says what the words can't," he said before pausing in embarrassment. "I mean... That sounded a lot less lame in my head."

"No, I get it. The words themselves aren't quite saying what they say when he sings them the way he does," she rambled before pausing as he had. "How's that for lame?"

"At least we're on the same page. It's, uhh...it's a band called 'Editors'. Their new one. It's kinda miserable but I like this one too," he said hesitantly before smiling and continuing teasingly. "You said you didn't have a favorite band and that Stakeout Mix experience was eye opening. I thought we'd work on your musical education. See what you like. Or...do you have a favorite band?"

Oh, god. Their first date. And he's wondering if something he had accepted at face value was true. Whether it had been another lie. But she had been honest that night. She knew a few old songs from the radio but she wasn't sure who sung what. Her exposure to music had been classical in her youth. This idea of words being music and music being words was just one more reason that, even knowing the path she walked to get here, she would have walked it just the same.

She smiled at him and propped up a pillow to reposition herself with her back to the headboard and patted the space to her right before replying. "I don't usually have much time for music. If I'm listening in on someone it's better not to have it as a possible distraction. Or have it cover up a noise I should hear. I just..." she shrugged.

"Well, you're in good hands."

"I'm sure I am. Educate me, wise one."

Chuck changed the song and joined her in the space next to her and spoke little as they listened. He told her a little about each band before playing a song or two from each. He teased her, saying it was like they were junior high students and she teased him about the guitar propped against the wall and whether he played.

"I always figured I'd get around to it," he said sadly.

She touched his hand to get his attention. "No time like the present," she said. "But maybe practice a little before you play for me. I'm trying to learn about _good_ music."

She smiled before slouching down to lay flat on her back with her hands across her stomach with her fingers interwoven as the most recent song ended. She closed her eyes, exhaled deeply and relaxed for the first time in years. When the silence persisted she opened just her left eye with the brow raised high and saw Chuck just looking at her with a sweet smile.

"Maestro?" she asked after a few seconds, nodding toward the stereo when Chuck's eyes met her open one. He scrambled to play a new song but didn't comment on it and she felt his eyes on her, somehow knowing he had resumed his position lying on his right side with his elbow on his pillow and hand supporting his head as he just watched her breathe.

She didn't know why it felt so calming. And she didn't dare open her eyes or turn to face him fearing their close proximity would lead to her lips on his. As it was, she had a fleeting thought that if she lay here quietly he might lean in and kiss her. She didn't expect him to do it. Not really. But that didn't stop the buzzing in her brain spreading to her entire body in anticipation of it. After all, they were supposed to _both_ be getting lucky and as she worked herself into a fever pitch over a kiss that apparently wasn't coming she bolted at the two sharp raps on the door.

"Good night kids! We've got an early one tomorrow," came the booming voice from outside the door and a hushed, indecipherable admonition from Ellie.

It had been an automatic response. And when Sarah realized the door wasn't going to open, she slowly broke the kiss that she had just planted on Chuck at least twenty seconds ago. She had vigorously mussed her own hair with her right hand and thrown her right leg over him. Chuck was stunned but his lips had melded sensually to hers out of the same reflex. Or a similar one. She wasn't sure which of them was more reluctant to separate.

"Sorry," Sarah whispered. "I thought someone was coming in." She then registered that she was still draped across him but made no attempt to move. Partly because she was momentarily uncertain whether her next move was to retreat or to grind seductively against him. This was even more comfortable than before. His left hand had found her waist, holding her gently with his huge hand splayed across her ribs and his thumb just barely brushing the cup of her bra. It felt glorious but he realized it at the same time and withdrew his hand quickly.

"Me too. Sorry. But they won't just barge in. As long as they know you're here." Why did that last part feel like an invitation? This was entirely too comfortable and she slowly removed her leg from where her foot was hooked around his hip and gently pressed her hand against his chest to gain some space all while he stared into her eyes watching her drift away.

"Could've been Morgan?" Sarah offered as a feeble excuse before realizing it was actually somewhat likely. "I should probably..." she started but trailed off as she looked at the clock. Two hours?! She'd been lying here next to him for two hours? Suddenly she wondered if her avoiding pouncing on him until Devon had knocked on the door was remarkable restraint or an opportunity wasted.

_Both_ she decided.

"Yeah, early day tracking down suspicious individuals."

"So glamorous," Sarah deadpanned as she tucked her hair behind her ear and Chuck's eyes followed her hand. As they always did. "This was nice. Maybe next time I can restrain myself."

She almost couldn't meet his eyes at the brilliance of his smile at her implied response to his implied invitation before cheekily responding "You can try."

She just smiled back at that. "Breakfast tomorrow?" she asked.

"Sounds great."

As Sarah made her way out silently, Chuck smiled at their picture from Comic-Con. He'd have to discuss it with her. This year's Con was before they had even met. Still, who knows what the future holds and he felt even more confident in the surprise he had planned for her.

.

* * *

.

Interstate 10, Eastbound, 10 miles west of San Bernardino, CA;

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 3:53 pm

.

Casey had been a little pissed about Chuck coming to her about meeting Mahnovski. She smiled at Chuck recounting Casey's description as Team Chuck's little fat kid. But Casey had been given better intel than she had and it really wouldn't do to antagonize him. She trusted him - he was her partner - she just didn't trust him to make the same decisions that she would.

Mahnovski was a little older than either she or Chuck. Had completed his Ph.D. at age seventeen before either of them had set foot in a university classroom. Had he been held in that miserable hole for eleven years?

Sarah herself had been 'recruited' at fifteen though they had been following her long before that. But she had outsmarted them for years. That had amused her at one time. _Catch me if you can_.

They could. And she didn't feel nearly as smart now.

After learning about the Bartowski version of Mother's Day whenever she thought of Chuck, more often than not she thought of Ellie. At age eleven, Laszlo had been recruited as a CIA brain. At age eleven, Ellie Bartowski had assumed responsibility for her little brother and become his primary caregiver. She wasn't sure why her thoughts had drifted there until she realized the connection. They had both been trapped.

And prisons take many forms.

That first night the option had been discussed of putting Chuck in a 'secure facility'. A disingenuous term for a hole in the ground. A room without a view intended to keep the world out as much as it was to keep its captive in.

She had wondered what would have happened to Chuck had someone from The Agency recognized the same potential they had stumbled onto with Laszlo Mahnovski. Even their last names were similar. Would they have identified Chuck's technical abilities and focused on those? Mahnovski had been recruited at the age of eleven and sent to college earning a degree by age fourteen. A compressed timeframe she suspected made possible under similar conditions as her own college experience.

She had been fifteen when recruited - sixteen when she first attended a college class - and it had been a completely foreign world to her. But where she had agent training to occupy her time he had been completely dedicated to academics and research completing graduate and doctoral education, earning a Ph.D. by the age of seventeen.

And then they stuck him in a box and extracted every possible measure of innovation from his genius. Agent Katz had a badge indicating he was from DARPA but she knew a CIA credential when she saw it. Katz regarded Laszlo as an unstable risk but she hadn't bothered to ask - knowing she wouldn't get a straight answer - whether Laszlo had been a madman _before_ they put him in a hole in the ground for his entire adult life.

She knew that everyone involved knew the answer to that question.

Casey had just recently delivered an enemy agent to a similar facility but her circumstances were somewhat different. She was trained to withstand far worse than run-of-the-mill, humane imprisonment but maybe Casey had some information to ease her mind.

"How was the Death Valley facility?" she asked.

"I didn't exactly get the nickel tour, Walker."

"Well, what you did see, did it look liveable? Or like a prison?"

"Nicer - bigger - than that hole Mahnovski was in. Don't worry Walker, I'm sure Mei-Ling will be comfortable enough there until her brother comes through. They promised him extraction after three years if he can make it that long. She'll get a nice new identity after that. Maybe work on a more socially acceptable job-skill set in the meantime. She's hard. She'll be fine."

Casey didn't mention that Mei-Ling indicated they were headed to Death Valley when Interstate 15 was a straighter shot to Mojave. She had just smiled knowingly when he had made the turn north onto Route 395. His orders were just to drop her off. They were greeted by the facility director - an outgoing man to the point of seeming a little less than trustworthy flanked by two silent guards as big as Casey himself.

Mei-Ling didn't seem any more inclined to trust the facility director than he was but she did visibly relax once he had outlined the terms of her detention and cooperation agreement. Casey only escorted them through processing but she had thanked him and encouraged him to remember her and her words.

He assumed that her read of the situation had at least improved the chances in her mind of dying of old age surrounded by grandchildren, the less grim of the two extreme fates she had proposed for herself.

He had been wondering just how many of these National Parks had secret facilities of one kind or another hidden in, or more likely under, them. Hell, Mahnovski's little hole in the ground had been in the Santa Monica Mountains despite what had been initially reported about his association with Los Robles. Tuna Canyon, to be specific, just a couple of miles from Santa Monica itself.

Mei-Ling had ongoing intelligence value. She was leverage against her brother. She had cut a deal and held no US secrets of consequence. It was likely she would be returned to society with minimal surveillance after a number of years.

Casey knew why Sarah was really asking about the Death Valley facility. But he also knew that the assessment of Chuck was that once the Intersect was rebuilt he would _not_ have ongoing intelligence value and, unless there was an unforeseen breakthrough or fortunate side effect of the ongoing research, he would hold _every_ US secret.

That was the reason he had been given forewarning of the order that would one day come. It seemed cruel but it was just smart. But it hadn't taken Mei-Ling's prodding to make him question whether the smart thing was the right thing, even with the stakes being every piece of US government intelligence. Maybe he could convince them that Chuck had value as a backup resource and get him into a bunker instead. If he could just stay out of trouble until the new Intersect was up and running.

Sarah was relieved that Casey didn't seem to realize yet that she was more concerned about Chuck possibly being detained in such a facility than Mei-Ling. his description of her, and the difference between she and Chuck, was one of many reasons. "It would take a hard person not to crack in a place like that," she commented, hopefully casually.

"The hole in the ground version? Or the plush, VIP version?"

"Either. Depends on the person."

Casey thought it best to start preparing her for at least the best case scenario as he saw it. "Some people have to be protected. They're better off in someplace secure than out in the world where anyone can get at them at any time."

_Shit_. He knew exactly who she was talking about. "Even if it drives them mad? Are they better off then?"

Casey had shared General Beckman's initial report on Mahnovski with her. The unreadable look on his face said as much as an unschooled reaction would have. He saw the disconnects in the report too. He didn't think Chuck would fare well underground either but it was probably the best they could hope for and he wasn't going to share either of those impressions.

On the surface, portions of the report would indicate a brilliant man free to live a life of academic discovery and engineering innovation. He had been characterized as 'working' for a clandestine engineering subcontractor at Los Robles National Labs. As though he had a private parking space and strolled in every morning with a reusable coffee mug and briefcase full of doodles from the previous evening of brainstorming at his comfortable but modest home.

A few details told a different story. Like being described as a government brain and, more disturbingly, the use of the word 'escaped'.

Most troubling to her was her description of Mahnovski as 'not being the kind of asset we can afford to lose to our enemies'.

That was also a disturbingly accurate description of Chuck.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA;

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:30 pm

.

After greeting Ellie and getting the all clear that Chuck was in his room getting ready Sarah peeked through the door hoping to see him in a suit. She agreed that for most men the adage 'the suit makes the man' held true but thought that with Chuck's shoulders and lean build, if he stood up straight and confident he would be the exception.

"Hey," she announced herself as Chuck arranged his necktie. "You look nice."

He did. He was a handsome man. Even with his unruly hair and his usual unremarkable uniform that concealed a remarkable man. But he looked more grown up today even if it was his father's old suit.

"Thanks. I feel like crap. I screwed up. I severely pooched the Laszlo situation last night," he lamented.

"Yeah, well," Sarah reached out to straighten his tie resting her palm on his chest for just a beat. Just long enough to feel the reassuring heat that radiated off of him. She had noticed that these little gestures were becoming more natural. More commonplace. Were they just becoming more practiced in their cover? Or was it something else.

She brightened as she continued her previous, more sharable, thought "...today you have a job interview." She sounded proud of him. Because she was proud of him.

"Do you...do you think I care about making low management at a Buy More?"

And there was the rub.

Chuck sat heavily on the bed and offered his version of recent events. "Are you kidding me? I aided and abetted the escape of the next Ted Kaczynski, Sarah."

The same role working for the government that had reignited his confidence - the role that was something he neither wanted nor deserved to have thrust upon him - was the same role that made the arc of his professional life seem too small for the things he was capable of doing.

Sarah sat in the nearby chair to face him as he continued. "I just, I can't believe that I, I was so wrong about the guy. No wonder you bugged my room. I'm an absolute idiot."

The world where he belongs - the one where he should be able to trust people - is too small for him now. And the world that offers him an opportunity to make a difference - and opportunity he has embraced - devours good, trusting people like him. Sarah looked aside and saw the picture she gave him in the trash.

He trusted her. Maybe he _was_ a fool.

But she didn't want to believe that. Didn't want the traits she admired in him to be his downfall. And she reminded herself, that's why SHE is here. "You know, just because you trust people doesn't make you an idiot."

"Yeah, well, I should've trusted you guys a little more. I'm sorry."

That would have to do for now though she wished they could stop pushing him into situations where he felt a need to apologize for simply being a better person than her and her peers. Hopefully, she could still make it back for the party tonight. Maybe she could make it clearer to him then.

But right now, she had a madman to catch. "Well, Casey got a signal on your car. Somehow, the GPS got turned back on, and Lazslo was heading east. So, I'll call you from the road. But don't worry; we're gonna bring him in, Chuck. Good luck today."

And she hoped her smile conveyed that he deserved some good things in his life.

.

* * *

.

Interstate 10, Eastbound, approaching San Bernardino, CA;

Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:00 pm

.

Sarah had come to some uncomfortable realizations about Chuck's so-called freedom. First, it was a fragile thing. At any moment an order could be given that he was to be detained indefinitely for 'his own protection'. The problem as she saw it was that the intel housed in his mind was the type that was only declassified after fifty years, if ever.

Second, it wasn't really a choice between imprisonment and elimination. Once the doors closed, if you were not meant to come back out alive it hardly mattered if they intended to eliminate you when you first went in. If they decided you weren't coming out, whether you lived another day or another seventy years, you weren't coming out.

Finally was the thought of this current tenuous arrangement. The concession of keeping his routine relatively unchanged. Of him remaining 'free'. It was all so confusing.

A couple of hours ago she had been wishing her not-real-boyfriend good luck on a job interview. An interview for a job that may have once seemed like a step up in life but now just seemed like part of a life he was trapped inside of. He had gone from being trapped by his own despondency to trapped by the US government. Now he was alternately hopeful about his ability to contribute positively to his role as a government intelligence asset and despondent that it prevented any long-avoided advancement in his civilian career.

His role at the Buy More was convenient because it included service calls. Service calls offered excellent options for emergency access to the database that resided in his mind. But recently he had mentioned a willingness to be something more that had been dormant before this whole affair had apparently resuscitated his ambition. But the current arrangement worked because it drew no attention. Nothing draws attention like change.

Chuck could start a new job or even his own company but being constantly called away would wreck such an endeavor in its infancy. His current job was perfect because he could do it in his sleep. Something he occasionally effectively did. Anything challenging or fulfilling would upset the status quo and she knew that wouldn't fly. He had been coasting through his life and now that he finally found the motivation to consider doing something more he would soon discover that would not be permitted.

What could be worse than having that which you desire dangled in front of you every day with no ability to pursue it, much less attain it?

No matter whether it was a hole in the ground, a comfortable VIP facility or his own unfulfilled life, he was still a prisoner.

No matter how free he seemed or how much his friends and co-workers and even his sister thought he was lucky to have such a beautiful companion she was just a piece of the prison itself. The gilding on the iron.

So-called freedom often comes with strings and her mere presence meant he was not free to pursue his dreams. Whether she called herself friend, agent, handler or girlfriend she was still his jailer and it was only a matter of time before he started to resent her for that.

She was roused from her bleak thoughts by Casey's announcement "We're right on top of it."

He raised the volume on the tracking device and the steady beeping from earlier had become a lightning fast trill. Until it began to slow.

"Turn around! We missed it," Sarah observed.

Casey's grunt seemed to signify a frustrated '_I know_' as he was already swinging wide to make a U-turn. They passed a service station where a delivery truck was parked and unloading, it's driver inside flirting with the cashier. Casey pulled up next to it and the trill became a nearly steady tone.

"Where's the Herder?" Sarah mumbled as she exited and stood surveying the surrounding area for Chuck's stolen, CIA-modified company car.

Casey had exited too and reached under the edge of the trailer as Sarah's phone rang and a candid image of Chuck lounging on his couch playing video games appeared. Her stomach dropped as Casey held up the GPS transponder with a strip of duct tape and a crudely wired battery dangling from it as she answered only to be greeted by Chuck's frantic voice.

"Laszlo is not headed east. He's going to the Santa Monica Pier," Chuck blurted out.

"Yeah, you don't say? We just found the GPS. Laszlo ripped it out and stuck it under a big rig," Sarah responded.

"Look, he was casing the arcade. It's where he was first recruited. There's a huge Halloween party there every year. I think he's going to blow it up." She could hear the wheels turning in Chuck's mind as his speech slowed slightly.

Agent Katz was investigating Mahnovski's estranged parents as a possible flight location before they picked up the GPS signal. She and Casey had chased a diversion. The only person close enough to do anything about any bombing plans Mahnovski might have was...

"Chuck! Stay put. The party's not until tonight, right? He'll want to maximize the effect. We can be there in," she checked her watch and did a quick calculation in her head.

_Fuck_.

She closed her eyes as she continued. "We can be there in two hours," she said firmly even as she deflated. Maybe they could get the local LEOs to evacuate. Cook up some story. Keep them away from Mahnovski and any surprises he had planned. Surprises like the ones that had killed two of his handlers.

But she also knew they were unlikely to get such approvals. No one was going to permit her to draw attention to _two_ high value government assets - Laszlo and Chuck - with no confirmation of an impending catastrophe and no agents on site to control the situation. Only then did she realize Chuck had gone silent and that her worst fear was about to happen. And she wasn't there.

"Chuck?"

"I'm sorry, Sarah," Chuck replied softly. "I sat with him. Talked with him. He's not stable. He may not want max effect. He may just want to watch it go BOOM. I might be able to talk him down. Stall him. I did it before. There's always a ton of kids there. Families. They may not have two hours," and there was a long pause pregnant with unspoken regrets before he continued with all he dared say.

"I'm sorry." He sounded like he knew those would be his last words to her.

"Chuck? Chuck!" The line had gone dead and Sarah redialed as she called out to Casey. "We have to head back. Right now. Chuck's going after Laszlo."

Casey just shook his head as he threw the transponder into a nearby ditch rather than take any chances with Mahnovski's handiwork and reentered the car to go after Chuck. Balls and brains. Just not at the same time. "Where to?"

"Santa Monica Pier. Chuck's convinced it's some sort of revenge thing. There's an arcade there where Laszlo was recruited."

"Scale of 1 to 10?" He asked as he whipped the car into westbound traffic.

"Massacre. There's a Halloween event there. Shit! It keeps going to voicemail."

"Relax. All the Herders are out. I wanted them swept for bugs and I had to send each one to a different location with a dozen other cars so no one saw a big neon sign saying 'something important at the Burbank Buy More'. Big Mike thinks its a corporate maintenance thing. Laszlo has Chuck's. Missing a driver's door too. Someone will spot it."

"That doesn't get us to the pier any quicker."

"No but it gets Chuck there slower. Even if he's right it would take some doing in the state he's probably in to come up with a story good enough for someone to lend him a car or even give him a ride. Unless he carjacks someone, he's not getting there before us. Bus was his go-to the first night. It would take him as long as us to get there by bus."

"How long would that take?"

"'Bout as long as us. You were right. About two hours?"

"Get us there faster, Casey."

Casey saw his partner remain outwardly professional in the seat next to him but he could see the subtle changes. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. After a few miles she pulled her bare feet up into the seat and curled up. Somehow became smaller. She thought she had everyone fooled, herself included, but he wasn't blind.

For her part, Sarah was thinking that she couldn't keep Chuck hidden from the world but she didn't want him going toe to toe with a ruthless madman either. And the fact that they were racing this kind, unassuming man as he rushed to do just that in an attempt to save innocent lives should tell anyone all they would ever need to know about Chuck Bartowski.

.

* * *

.

045: Imperfect Attendance

.

Chicago, IL; February to May, 1995

.

Twelve year old Lindsey Flanagan knew exactly how many days of school she could skip without raising suspicion and decided she would use every one that she possibly could. Threats of being held back due to excessive absences were never a motivation. She had never stayed in the same city for an entire school year much less two. The next school would never know about the previous one whether she left there in good standing or not. Dad just shines them on about missing records or records lost in fires and they were usually gone before anyone pressed the issue enough to worry about it.

School is boring anyway. She has read almost everything she has ever been assigned years before her peers even considered it and frequents libraries in the afternoons unless there's a job she's working with Dad. She reads absolutely anything she can get her hands on but loved classic literature, poetry and philosophy.

Thanks to the Gideons, she has read hotel room bibles dozens of times - out of a lack of options more than anything else - to the point that she can nearly recite it. She can certainly cite chapter and verse of any fragment someone tries to quote at her like the well-meaning people at the shelter they stayed in for three weeks last winter often did. They never seemed to appreciate when she corrected them on the out-of-context use of their scripture quotes.

When she was ten they spent some time in Tijuana and she picked up some language from conversation and some from books. She went to a small bookstore and found the thickest Spanish language book she could find and asked if they had an English translation. She used her months allowance of pocket money to buy both.

She read the English version first cover-to-cover over the course of three days. Then sat down with a deliberate plan to read Don Quixote line-by-line, word-by-word from the Spanish version with the English version open to the same line next to her as a crutch.

Most of the letters were similar and the ones that weren't were easy enough to figure out. The sentence structures were pretty straight forward and by the time she he was one third of the way through she barely referenced the English version - only pausing to compare the occasional word to her English reference version or jot it down on an ever expanding vocabulary list inside the back cover until she could research it further. When she was two thirds of the way through she was reading exclusively from the Spanish version.

Throughout the process, she immediately applied her newly acquired knowledge to her interactions around town and picked up on variations in dialects and slang and became her father's constant companion in most of his business dealings. No one really paid much attention to the skinny little girl in the sundress quietly lurking in the background making sure her father wasn't being swindled by the men speaking in Spanish behind his back.

When she was eleven they spent the latter part of the winter in Quebec where she preferred to stay inside most of the time and repeated the process with two copies of Les Misérables. This time her father paid.

The process was similar but the accent was trickier and she found she needed a bit more personal interaction with native French speakers at markets and the like to perfect it but by mid-spring she was indistinguishable from a native though she blamed her still evolving vocabulary on her youth. That wasn't the first time she realized that she was different than other eleven year old girls but it was the first time that she consciously used that difference to her advantage - to distract people from the fact that they were dealing with a self-taught trilingual child by using their low expectations against them.

Hiding her brilliance by pretending to be unremarkable.

Her most recent language based endeavor was more ambitious and the pronunciations and the alphabet had her a little frustrated. She had been hanging around a local arcade on one of her self-designated days off and overheard an elderly man who worked there speaking with both a woman she assumed was his wife and another male friend in Russian.

When the man noticed her standing around the second time and still not spending any money he called her something sounding like 'besprizornyj rebenok' and tried to shoo her out. She has been kicked out of better places and got the gist of his animated gesticulations. She realized later that she was dressed for comfort in some of her slouchiest clothes and understood his reaction but went book shopping before coming back the following week. Dad paid again. He even helped her acquire the hard-to-find third version when she explained its purpose.

When the man at the arcade tried to shoo her out the next time she took out all three of her books and pantomimed the act of translating between the three. They were an English version of 'Crime and Punishment', a Romanized Russian version and the third, a Russian version in Cyrillic, and she asked "Ty mne pomozhesh?" with reasonable pronunciation causing him to smile widely and nod.

His name is Visily and he ends up calling her Lidiya or Lida instead of Lindsey and occasionally with a smile 'printsessa iz ulitsy' as he remembered the less flattering name he had initially called her. She helps him around the arcade as he converses with her in fluent Russian and broken English and she responds in fluent English and broken Russian. As his English improves over time she feels an unexpected satisfaction in being able to teach something useful to someone other than herself.

She helps him tidy up a bit and they talk while he maintains some of the machines. He teaches her all the tricks of her favorite game in the arcade beginning with the override button on the back of the machine that provides free games. The fact that the machines are never level and you have to adjust your shots accordingly. How to bank the ball off the walls of the machine to hit the highest scoring targets and how much more effective she can be by kneeling to push the ball for better control rather than rolling it underhand as almost everyone else does.

Three months later she is relatively fluent in Russian, though still building her vocabulary, and a master of Skee Ball. Dad knows where she is on these 'days off' from school and has even helped her with her excuses once she told him about her Russian 'teacher'.

It is no surprise when he comes to pick her up that day in late May. She told him she spotted the black suits watching them again. But he has the too-familiar harried look of a con gone wrong. He has the money but the men he had been dealing with had figured out his swindle quicker than expected and they have to skip town.

Visily smiled at her when she set down the English version of Crime and Punishment down on his desk along with the Romanized Russian version saying "YA ne nuzhdayetes' v nikh bol'she." The Cyrillic version she keeps.

"Proshchaniye, printsessy" he says as she hugs him in farewell. Infinitely preferring being called 'Princess' or even his earlier 'Princess of the Street' to the 'gutter rat' of their first encounter.

As she approached the car she could easily see that it had been hastily packed. Her bag was on top - the one she was told to always have packed and ready to go - and she has a tiny moment of panic that quickly became solemn acceptance.

"Dad, did you pack Bunny?" she asks already knowing the answer. She'll be thirteen soon and maybe it's time to leave such childish concerns behind though a tiny part of her is crushed by the loss of the one thing left over from her time with her mother.

"Of course, Darlin'. There's your bag right on top."

"Thanks." she says knowing the truth and concealing her hurt. It was her own fault for not being prepared. She was usually more careful but left hastily this morning. She knows he didn't check her bag. It was understood that it should always be packed and ready to go.

She knows that she left the stuffed dog with the contradictory name she had given it when she was five caught up in the covers of her unmade bed.

.

* * *

.

046: Fear is the Mind-Killer

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Courtyard, Oct 31, 2007

.

Sarah was sitting off to the side of the courtyard trying to be inconspicuous. The costume may have been a little daring but it was something she knew Chuck would appreciate. She implied that the costume had been CIA provided but that was a lie. A white lie. One she had expertly told by stating a completely unrelated fact about the CIA being able to make anything but it was for a fun reason for once.

So many little moments had led to it. Ellie making a comment about Chuck's boyhood aspirations of becoming the captain of the Millennium Falcon, Morgan referring to Bryce Larkin as the 'Fett to Chuck's Solo', even Carina had mentioned Wookiees - which she now got as pertains to Pehman Alahi. When Ellie had invited her to the party Sarah had suggested Han Solo - not even by name - for Chuck. She hadn't even known who Leia was when Ellie had said it. But they watched the first movie later that night and the other two later that week and the idea had begun to take shape.

It was a good fit for him in a weird way. She realized that everyone at the Buy More considered Chuck their de facto leader. They all looked to him for guidance and although he was certainly one of them - a nerd through an through - he was as rare a thing in the nerd world as he was in the spy world. He was the cool nerd. The one they all aspired to be more like in one way or another. In a world of misfits, he was clearly looked upon as the Han Solo of their bizarre company.

Sarah had decided to make sure she had the costume handy although actually wearing it had been subject to internal debate. She wasn't sure she wanted to attend the party at all. As Chuck's supposed girlfriend it should have been justified but she didn't like toying with him in non-mission outings. She was frankly concerned that he would start to blur the clearly defined lines of their relationship. And the costume itself didn't help in that regard.

She was sure Chuck assumed the picture she had given him was a field office job but she had done the insert of Chuck's face. She had taken the picture of herself in the costume and had inserted herself via photoshop. For her part, no additional doctoring was required. As much as Chuck had lamented that it wasn't real, she had wished it was just as much and it was her first hint about her plans for Halloween.

The device inside the frame was stupid. She knew Casey had the apartments wired out the ass but she couldn't resist adding one of her own to Casey's bucketload of bugs. Hers was on her own frequency. She had just wanted a means to check up on him outside of asking Casey for access. It would alert her if needed and, theoretically, she could listen in whenever she wanted. Whenever she hadn't seen him for too long a time and wanted to be sure he was OK.

She didn't blame Chuck for being upset with her and lumping her in with Casey's surveillance motivations. Looking back on it her true actions were just spy instincts run amok and maybe a tiny bit of stalker tendencies mixed in. She tried to convince herself she wouldn't have listened in if he were talking about her to Morgan or Ellie or Devon but that left her wondering what exactly she had hoped to hear. So she decided that trying to split hairs between her motivations and Casey's was a can of worms she didn't really want to open.

When she had seen the picture and frame in the waste basket earlier her heart sank and she knew she had to do something to make it up to him. She wondered briefly if he thought about what the bug meant about her as a prospective girlfriend. What it would be like to date a career spy for real. When she was fourteen would she have put such a device in Billy Simpson's bedroom to see if she could find out what kind of girls he liked? Maybe. Probably. She had never really figured out boys in school and she had never been a cover girlfriend for someone who was not trained as she had been.

She found herself questioning everything.

So seeing the picture and frame in his waste basket had helped her make up her mind. Chuck had definitely been surprised by her arrival and her costume. She was surprised that the brief but appraising look he gave her made her feel quite satisfied with her choice. Taking a self portrait to give him a real memory of a real event was a hasty addition to the plan.

Seeing him look at her with mouth agape at her costume and then at her in appreciation of the gesture was something she had mot planned on at all. Nor had she planned on the warm feeling both looks gave her for different reasons.

Once Chuck had joined Morgan in their sandworm costume at the urging of the crowd she watched them for a while doing laps of the party, making several pit stops at the punch bowl before wandering off to mingle a bit. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the leering looks she was getting from some of the doctors at the party. Chuck's Buy More colleagues glanced but didn't ogle her excessively out of respect for Chuck. The only safe place seemed to be next to Ellie and Devon with their even more revealing costumes.

She had the vague realization that the only person who had checked her out that hadn't made her skin crawl was Chuck before finding a corner to relax and fend off the occasional unwelcome advance.

"This seat taken?"

Sarah looked up at Chuck and smiled at his mussed hair from the sandworm costume and his rumpled clothing he hadn't had a chance to change. He was holding a large red plastic cup in his right hand and his necktie was still loosely tied around his neck. She resisted the urge to fix it thinking back to doing so earlier. Lingering with her hand against his chest, feeling his warmth, just long enough to feel his heart beat once. It was all that she dared.

"I dunno, I've felt a little neglected while you've been off playing with Morgan." even as she said it she continued smiling up at him and gestured with her eyes toward the empty chaise she didn't feel the need to clarify that she had been saving for him.

"Before I say anything else, I should have been the first to say it but you look amazing, and not just in a geeky fanboy way. The Leia to my Solo," he mused dreamily with that adorable half-grin of his.

"Could've been but you went with a sandworm? That's from Dune, right?" She hadn't read the books or seen the film but she was vaguely aware of parts of the story and had seen the poster in his room.

"Yes. Yes, it is. Ever seen it?"

"Umm, no. I think I saw one of the books in an airport somewhere. By Herbert and Anderson, I think? I flipped through it," she stated and when she said she flipped through it Sarah meant she had speed read about fifty pages. "Honestly? It looked a little boring. Or maybe just time-consuming to get into and I didn't have that kind of time."

Chuck was looking at her with that unadulterated wonder like he sometimes did. The way that made her feel both comfortable and uncomfortable. Safe and afraid. She didn't know if he was reacting to the idea of her reading a science fiction book or the idea that she was off on some adventure that left no time for recreational reading. He was so naïve about the nature of some of her adventures but the way he looked at her sometimes made her feel like some sort of superhero.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Chuck leaned in and whispered. Sarah could tell he was a little tipsy and smiled in amusement "...it _is_ a little boring." he returned to his normal tone and sat back in his seat before continuing "Especially if you were looking at _one_ of the books and not _the_ book. Sounds like you got hold of one of the ones by the son of the original guy. It got a little weird after a while. Or so I've heard. I couldn't get into it either. I never actually read it. Just saw the movie which I liked but the purists hated and read a few things about the books instead of the books themselves. Don't tell the Nerd Police, okay?"

She laughed at that and asked, "Then why the sandworm?"

"Well, it saves you from individual costumes - it was a lark one year. We talked about the old pantomime horse costumes he had seen on Monty Python but neither of us really wanted to be the rear end - me because of having to stoop so far over and Morgan because he didn't want to draw attention to how far he didn't have to stoop."

"He's not _that_ short."

"Sez the leggy supermodel..." Chuck was on a roll and didn't notice the slight blush and shy look away he earned with that unguarded, punch-lubricated comment "...anyway, we started talking about the Chinese dragons at parades and Shai-Hulud was brought to life. But tonight, having seen the movie, I've been thinking about the litany against fear..."

"The what against what?"

"The litany against fear. It's like a meditation that a group in the story uses to overcome things they consider illusions - things like fear and pain. It's something like: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. Something about letting it pass over and through me. Turning to see its path and that there is nothing real left of it. Blah-dy, blah-dy, blah. I think I've had too much punch for an exact quote."

"Riiiight. 'Cause the embarrassing thing would be to misquote it."

"See? You _are_ funny. And I'll have you know its an increasingly deeply important principle for me," he chastised with mock seriousness.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," she replied, smiling with equally false seriousness. "Why is that?"

"Because I see you and Casey and what you can do. I don't think I can do anything like _that_ but I don't ever want to freeze up and wreck a...mish...cause a problem. I don't want it to be a mind-killer. I don't want anything to get killed." He gave her a pointed look and the implication was obvious. Or _anyone_."

"That's sweet Chuck but let me and Casey worry about that. We know what we're doing and I don't want you to do anything you're not trained for. I think we're asking more than enough if you as it is."

He looked thoughtful at that and she considered that he had just defused his second bomb in six weeks. Maybe he deserved a night off from being told what he _couldn't_ do. "But," she began again "if you're up for something daring, go take a shower - you smell."

"I did just race a bike 20 something miles today. My legs are jelly.

"Poor baby, maybe you should start running. Work on your cardio. Go. Get clean. You'll feel better. Then check your closet. See if you like my surprise."

She just smiled at his quizzical look as he sat frozen for a few moments trying to puzzle it out. "Go," she said. "See for yourself."

Chuck glanced over and saw Morgan talking animatedly to several other guests - Shai-Halud nowhere to be seen - and decided his obligations to his friend had been met. "I think the sand worm has run its course - will you stay for a bit?"

"Wouldn't miss it," she said to his back as he went inside the apartment.

.

* * *

.

Fear.

The little death that brings total obliteration. That sounded about right to Sarah.

Chuck didn't seem to realize that overcoming fear wasn't his problem. He somehow managed to do that whenever the situation called for it. He fretted too much about all the flailing and worrying that came beforehand. He didn't have the training to approach such harrowing situations while projecting a calm exterior, yet he still managed to address them rationally and with a clear head despite all the apparent histrionics.

He didn't have the affectations of a trained agent - those who had mastered _hiding_, not eliminating their fear - but he had something that couldn't really be taught. That was, in fact, sometimes frowned upon. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, if there was a _right_ thing to be done he would find a way to do it.

He had recently lamented his failure to do something important with his life. Had just moments ago compared himself unfavorably to Casey and herself when they had been mostly taking their cues from him lately. He was doing something important. He just had no idea what it was going to look like and no way he could have expected this.

Some sort of wacky Monkeys Paw curse that had thrust incredible responsibility upon him and found him up to the challenge. He wanted to do something important and now his entire life had been hijacked into an undercover life as the man who held the secrets of his nation.

_Be careful what you wish for._

.

* * *

.

"So...Sarah," a familiar voice interrupted her musings as the man sat in Chuck's vacated seat.

"So...Morgan," she replied curiously as he launched into what he wanted to say.

"You know, I've known Chuck a long time. And I always figured he'd go off and do something really awesome with his life. And maybe he'd keep in touch or maybe he wouldn't but then...things changed. He came back to the Buy More, got me a job there and worked himself up to run the Nerd Herd and - I don't know if you know but he's _really_ good at it. I mean the guy can fix anything. And I thought...hey, its not so bad.

"Maybe he's happy doing that and, you know, its a job where we can sort of work together and he'll eventually be manager or something and that would be a good thing for him. We can keep gaming and smoking and - I mean he quit that a while back and he's keeping me straight and maybe don't tell him I mentioned that - I'm mostly just mainlining grape soda these days-"

"Not sure that's any healthier," Sarah narrowed her eyes and commented.

"Right, but the point is, I thought maybe we didn't have to change but something happened yesterday that made me realize those walls were never meant to contain him."

"What's that?" Sarah prompted.

"I was...doing something stupid that Chuck called me out on and I said, you know, c'mon Chuck you used to be cool and he kinda went off saying sorry I'm changing but who wants to work retail for the rest of their life and maybe...maybe I should grow up."

"Oh, Morgan. He was just stressed."

"I know. The interview thing. Tell me the truth, did he blow it off because I was being a tool about it? Or it's just not where he want to work anymore at all or anything. I mean I tried to talk him up to the interviewer but, surprise, they actually want to interview the person they're hiring."

"You're a good friend, Morgan. And he helped me out with something. He's a great guy and his time will come." Sarah realized these were all true things and how easy it was to play the role of Chuck's girlfriend.

"I know. And I don't want to lose him as a friend but I don't really know what I want to do with my life. I mean there's a couple of things I've considered but I'm not really ready. There's money I'll have to save up but I'm also not quite ready to try something new I might fail at. But he seems to be figuring some stuff out. I might not be ready to grow up but he is. He probably has been for a long time. He told me I need to accept that you're an important part of his life now and I just want to let you know that I'll try to stop getting in the way."

"Morgan, I like having time together with Chuck but I'm not trying to get between the two of you. You're his oldest friend. I don't think thats something Chuck would just forget." she loved hearing she was an important part of Chuck's life even if the full explanation wasn't quite what everyone believed. Still, embracing this role was her best and most believable course of action.

"You're right, you're right. I just need to...but I mean, really Sarah? Roast beef?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What sandwich would you take to a desert island?"

She had a random thought and smiled mischievously before replying "Is a Chuck sandwich allowed? I mean, you know, anything between two slices of bread counts, right. If... if you don't mind me taking him from you to our desert island."

OK, maybe is was possible to embrace her role too much because Morgan sat dumbfounded for a moment before he reacted "But Chuck said you just said roast beef."

"Uh, why would he say that? I mean, roast beef usually has mayonnaise - or it does when I eat it - and out in the heat? That's gross. Plus roast beef is always better when it's cold outside. Maybe a French dip, you know, au jus. But in the heat and sun? I can't really think of a worse choice except maybe tuna melt."

Morgan stared for a moment, mouth agape then looked down at her costume before looking back up and saying "You might be the perfect woman."

"Uh, thanks?"

Morgan moved to get up as he continued speaking "I need to talk to Chuck for a sec. Revise an earlier statement. Although if you were the perfect woman you would have got a Han costume for Chuck to go with yours."

Sarah smiled knowingly "Check his closet."

"You're kidding? And you let him do the worm with me?"

"I didn't _let_ him do anything. I just, didn't want to spoil your fun. Both of you. I know he and I spend a lot of time together but I'm sure we can work out a custody arrangement, Morgan."

"OK, I gotta see this costume. And I'll uhh...I'll tell him to hurry."

.

* * *

.

"Hey, Sarah."

"Hey Ellie," Sarah replied as she accepted the fresh beverage in the disposable red cup. "I didn't mention before but you look hot. I like the eyes."

"I look like a topiary," Ellie lamented distractedly.

"You could have gone with the snake version." Ellie had shown her a possible costume that was nothing more than a sheer body stocking with an artificial snake wrapped around the torso and groin.

"Ugh, way too daring. Though - like I said before - today's the day to be someone else - someone you wouldn't normally be. Still, I wasn't comfortable in that one. But if I were competitive about that kinda thing it would have been the only way to turn as many heads as you." Ellie teasingly complimented.

"This one's actually kinda modest. You should see some versions. Talk about indecent..."

"Maybe save that version for later? That's what I'm doing with the snake one," Ellie said salaciously with the tip of her tongue peeking between her teeth.

Hers was a very stylized bikini top and skirt that was slit up both sides but full enough that she was actually wearing boy shorts underneath but Sarah thought of some of the Leia costume options she had found with tops that were metal only with no lining and much more revealing skirts with her hips exposed. She thought of Chuck's reaction to one of those and couldn't help but blush furiously. "Ellie..." she practically whined in frustration more than embarrassment.

"I know, I know. He's my brother. It's just..." she trailed off. _Its just that he's absolutely crazy about you and I hope you feel the same_, Ellie silently attempted to convey. "...anyway, saw you chatting with Morgan. Are you cool with the other half of the worm?"

"Yeah, I think so. Somehow roast beef put me over the top." Sarah assumed that, had she been on the other side of this conversation, she would have had the same bewildered reaction as Ellie just had and realized there was no real possibility of elaborating. "I really have no idea."

"He's a strange one."

"You seem to have warmed up to him."

"Well, he sees Chuck growing up - like, all at once. And he may have been thrown by that at first but, like always, he's trying to do what Chuck's doing. It may have been expecting too much too soon for him to drop the worm cold turkey, though."

"Speaking of 'dropping the worm', thanks for slipping the costume into Chuck's closet."

"He'll never wear the pants."

Just then Morgan came out of the apartment and gave Sarah a huge double thumbs up, only to be followed by...Oh my...

"I think you're wrong about that."

Chuck had the shirt buttoned up more than expected under his vest and the boots and low slung holster were a little cartoonish but it was the tight dark blue pants with the dashed red stripe up the side that held her attention.

"Stop drooling, Sarah. It's not ladylike."

"Says the topiary."

"OK, fine. You blush at your own costume but you make me put _that_ in my own brother's closet." Ellie tutted as she vacated Chuck's seat. "You, young lady, are a hypocrite."

"Yes I am," Sarah purred through her smile as she watched Chuck approach and Ellie grinned uncontrollably as she retreated.

.

* * *

.

Chuck took a slight detour to get another cup of punch for each of them and delivered hers to her. "Here you go, thought you might be getting low."

"Wouldn't want that. Pretty daring costume there Captain Solo."

"Don't think it's too revealing?" he asked embarrassed.

_That's rather the point_, she thought to herself even as she struck the pose from the movie and asked "Seriously?" indicating her own revealing costume.

"Right. Forget I said that."

"Good boy," she said as she relaxed back into her lounging position and Chuck took a seat next to her.

"Seriously, I love it. The Solo to your Leia. And everyone's pretty drunk so I don't think they'll care too much. I know I don't. Sorry I just left you here, I hope no one harassed you too much."

"No, I told them I was with you so they'd better back off if they knew what was good for them. There's a couple of bikers that wanted a word with you when you came back..."

"I'm not skeered..." he deliberately slurred. Or at least she thought it was deliberate. "I have a personal guardian angel. And if Casey's not around I've got you."

"Oh, nice." she laughed.

"I'm kidding. Everyone knows you're my angel. So what were you doing anyway."

"Just thinking."

"Morgan told me what he said. Just so you know I only did that occasionally and don't do it any more."

"I'm not judging. But why not?"

"Well, it's just another way to hide from the real world. And I don't know what it would do to the...thing," he filtered himself as he tapped his temple. "I wouldn't want to miss something and have someone get hurt."

Oh, Chuck. "Might help your headaches, though." She decided not to comment on the headache he was likely to have tomorrow as much as he had drank tonight, or whether alcohol might affect the Intersect, considering he had defused _another_ bomb today. "And you deserve a drink or three. But that's not what I was thinking about."

"The wisdom of Dune, then?"

"Not quite. Maybe. But more about the ancient Chinese curses.

"Sounds like 'Confucius say...something clever that Confucius never said'. What are the ancient Chinese curses?"

"Pretty close, there are three...curses that is. Not actually Chinese of course, someone just thought it would be clever to portray them that way. Wanna hear them?"

"I dunno, do I?"

"I think you'll see the humor."

Chuck leaned back with one knee up "Go ahead, oh wise one, lay it on me then." Gawd those pants are _really_ tight. Does he even realize what he's doing?

She quickly overcame her staring and shared her earlier thoughts with him. "OK, so the first one is, 'may you live in interesting times.'"

Chuck snorted his punch as he was sipping when she said it. "I think I've heard that one somewhere before," he smiled. "Definitely interesting times."

"The second is, 'may you come to the attention of those in authority.'"

Chuck actually laughed out loud at that. "Oh, my. It is delightful to have come to the attention of Beckman and Graham. Especially Graham. Beckman seems only moderately annoyed by me but Graham looks at me like he wants to hurt me."

"Don't take it personally. He looks at everyone that way. Carina calls him Scary Man."

"Apt. Ok, so what's the third curse?"

"'May you get what you wish for.'" She said simply.

Chuck contemplated this third one in terms of all the grief that had accompanied a woman as amazing as Sarah Walker coming into his life. "Reminds me of a story. Ever read The Monkey's Paw?"

Sarah was stunned for a moment before responding quietly "Yeah, I know it. It's weird that you get me. Think like me"

"Not so weird. I like that you're so smart. Its challenging. And its not as awful as the monkey's paw wishes but there has been a fair bit of shit for me to get what I wished for."

"What do you mean?"

"I always wanted a beautiful, brilliant, funny woman to come into my life." Chuck looked at her deliberately and she felt something warm and strange stir inside her chest. She shifted a bit and the slit of her skirt slid up her thigh. She had no idea how deliberate that had been on her part but Chuck glanced down at the smooth skin before looking her in the eyes again and continuing. "I just never considered the chain of events required to make something that extraordinary happen."

"Well, may you get what you wish for." Sarah tipped her cup to Chuck before taking a large gulp.

Chuck returned the salute with his own cup. "I knew I was cursed. But, hey 'every day above ground', right?"

"What?" said Sarah, startled by the apparent reference to the detainment centers that so occupied her mind lately.

"You know, 'every day above ground is a good day'. Live to fight another day and all that. We never knowwho's much time we have."

"Right."

They sat quietly for a moment and, as he considered his approach, Chuck saw his sister watching them.

"El is watching us. And I think she just talked to a snake so I have no idea what she may be up to. She really likes you, you know?"

"I like her too. She's an amazing woman."

"What are you doing tomorrow?" he blurted.

"Well...why?"

"Umm...I was thinking that our cover is that we met at my work but we've been dating for a few weeks and maybe it would be a good idea to be seen out and about with me showing you some of my old haunts? I've got tomorrow off and I did say I'd show you around town. Wanna cash in? I mean, I don't know if you've heard but I defused a bomb today. It was in all the papers."

She sat there considering it for a moment. He made it clear it was for the cover. It made sense. It had been a really stressful day and they both deserved some downtime. By spending it together they would just be being efficient by securing their cover. And she really wanted to take him up on it.

"It's OK if you don't wanna..." he began even as Sarah replied "Sure."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. I mean, here we are in matching costumes but everyone's pretty blitzed at this point. It wouldn't hurt to be seen out and about. So, sure."

"Great," Chuck beamed. "Maybe you can relax a tiny bit and have a good time too?"

"Maybe." she smiled as Chuck drained his cup. What could it hurt? Other than the fact that she liked being the Leia to Chuck's Solo, if only for one night, a little too much.

But when he tipped the cup up she almost laughed at the single word she read embossed on the cup's bottom almost like a warning.

_Solo_.

Be careful what you wish for.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: I thought about letting it ride. It is a rather memorable scene when Chuck asks Sarah to stay for exactly forty-two minutes and fifteen seconds. The only problem is that Arcade Fire's first album is actually almost six minutes longer than that.

The Santa Monica Mountains run along the coastline and we see the ocean when Laszlo finally breaks the surface. Los Robles Medical Center is a little north of that but definitely not directly by the sea. But Beckman's briefing is a mixed bag of BS anyway. Laszlo's either an 'asset' or a 'subcontractor'. You don't 'escape' from someplace where you are 'work'. Though it sometimes seems that way.

The three ancient Chinese curses are unattributed because no one seems to know exactly from where they come. There are many slight variations and their wisdom as curses wrapped in what seem like blessings is irrefutable. They simply are.

In case it's not a worldwide thing, there are these iconic, red plastic party cups that are used at like every keg party and drinking game everywhere ever (in America) made by what used to be Solo Cup Company. A quick wiki (that sounds dirty) says they had sales of $2.4 BILLION in 2006. We drink a lot. But the version I'm thinking of has the word 'Solo' embossed on the bottom.

I left a couple of loose threads of no major consequence. I also figured people talk at parties, right?

Russian translations: I have no experience with the Russian language but the conjugations and modifications to qualifier words seem super tricky. Google translate works best using Cyrillic alphabet Russian phrases but I like to run things through the translator both ways to ensure it doesn't come back as gibberish. Also I suspect most readers are like me and have no idea how to phonetically pronounce a Russian phrase in Cyrillic so I went with the Romanized versions which can at least be read phonetically.

The Russian phrases are (to the best of my understanding):

Besprizornyj rebenok (Беспризорный ребенок) means: Gutter snipe or street rat

Ty mne pomozhesh (Ты мне поможешь) means: Will you help me?

Printsessa iz ulitsy (Принцесса из улицы) means: Princess of the street

Ya ne nuzhdayetes' v nikh bol'she (я не нуждаетесь в них больше) means: I do not need them anymore

Proshchaniye printsessa (Прощание принцесса) means: Farewell princess

Other things I find funny...

Casey (re: Laszlo): "What's he going to do? Hurt me with his mind?" Am I the only one that thinks this is slightly stilted word choice? Am I the only one who thinks of Firefly and River Tam making the (empty?) threat to Jayne Cobb: "I can kill you with my brain"? (I nearly had Sarah call Chuck Captain Tight-Pants...)

Bike vs. Car: that is one LONG bike ride from Burbank to the pier. Google tells me that Burbank to Santa Monica Pier is a little over a two-hour bike ride via the Los Angeles River Bike Path. Riverside / Venice is faster but doesn't seem as direct and I doubt Chuck would have known that. Morgan's bike is a ten-speed so it's easily faster than the Google time (probably half) but Chuck's not in great shape. San Bernardino is roughly two hours east of Santa Monica. Had they found the GPS 'in downtown', Sarah and Casey would have easily beaten Chuck to the pier with him on a bike although - as I write this - with traffic it is 47 minutes from LA to the Pier.

The bottom line is there are numerous combinations of factors, regardless of the spy tandem's origination point that would STILL put them at the pier just after Chuck gets there. This is the kind of crazy, pointless research I do but if nothing else now you, like me, know there is a second 'R' in San Bernardino.

Ages: So, I say Ellie was eleven when her mother left, leaving her the de facto parent in the Bartowski household as their father slipped further away (more on this later, of course). Keeping them four years different in age this means Chuck was seven. I'm OK with this because canon has three distinct and different data points.

'Ring Part II' implies he was nine via the broken necklace scene set in 1991. 'Best Friend' implies 1992 when Chuck says Morgan was there for him when his mother left by saying that occurred when Chuck was in the fifth grade. These two aren't necessarily contradictory if you assume, as I have, that Chuck skipped kindergarten. (I assume Ellie also skipped a grade keeping their academic careers staggered by four years.)

However, 'Anniversary' says the 'Frost Queen' bedtime story - presumably the last time Chuck saw his mother - was in 1994. There's a way to keep all of this intact but I opt to put all these events in roughly the same place on the timeline. The necklace was broken, the story was read and Morgan consoled Chuck at the age of seven when he was in third grade in or around October of 1989.

Inconsequential and Accidental Foreshadowing: In this episode, Devon has a bro-moment discussion with Morgan, telling him he should ask himself the life-altering question: "Am I a Tucker?" In S5, Big Mike marries Morgan's mother, Bologna. See it yet? Not that Big Mike formally adopts Morgan, or Morgan adopts Big Mike's last name but Big Mike's last name IS...Tucker.


	18. XVIII: Only a Memory

...wherein Chuck and Sarah spend some time engaging in perfectly reasonable cover maintenance...

Canon Reference: Insert between episodes 106 (Sandworm) and 107 (Alma Matter)

Contents: Two chapters; One super-sized (10K words), one short (2,200 words)

PSA: After three years poking around this site I just accidentally discovered that if you click on the arrows just after a story's title and just before the author! Instead of using the first chapter as the 'front door' you jump to the latest chapter! Of course, you may be direct linking to the most recent chapter from an alert but I swear this felt like Homer Simpson discovering that he didn't have to type all three letters of 'Yes'.

'The More you Know' (star trailing a rainbow flies across the sky...)

A/N: Early post! Midnight showing on a Chuck Friday (at least it midnight here - the site is on Pacific Time). The better to partake of yuletide festivities. And this little bit of fluff may have gotten entirely out of hand...and I'm totally cool with that.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied.

Additionally, no ownership or claim to any songs by Smithereens or the Les Misérables musical production (with purely coincidental similarities to titles), _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ (TV Series), _Pee Wee's Big Adventure_, Billy Joel's greatest hits, Ming Na's greatest hits, any Cap-Com, Midway, Sega or Namco video games (that about covers them all, I think), Pop-A-Shot or Skee-Ball (I have no idea who makes those, I like to think its Christmas elves) or any butchered interpretations of Nietzsche or Sartre is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XVIII - Only a Memory

* * *

.

047: When We Were Young and Unafraid

.

Santa Monica Pier; Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007

.

"So, this is the full Bartowski treatment, huh?" Sarah gave him a crooked little half grin to let him know she was just pulling his leg.

"Not quite. I don't think you're ready for the _full_ Bartowski treatment. I haven't cracked open that particular play book since High School but it used to go over pretty well."

"Really? Use it much?"

"All the time."

"Ever get lucky?"

"God no, I was usually with Morgan."

Sarah burst out laughing at that and Chuck called it a victory.

She good-naturedly wondered, between the auditory aphrodisiac that apparently was Arcade Fire's first album and whatever constituted the 'full' Bartowski treatment, just what else was lurking in Chuck's bag of tricks that he didn't quite deem her ready for.

He just loved to hear her laugh. He imagined that she didn't get to do it enough for his taste so he took every opportunity to amuse her. And that was really all today was about for him. Of course, she was obviously incredibly beautiful. And smart and funny. And he was incredibly attracted to her but today was just about letting her - letting both of them - be a little normal for a few hours.

Of course 'getting lucky' with Sarah Walker was a vague, ever present desire, but it meant something a little different to him than most might expect. He knew their relationship was fundamentally a cover required for her to efficiently protect him. And to most guys that would seem like wonderful thing. An excuse for some degree of intimate contact with a beautiful woman. But most wouldn't immediately appreciate that it meant that every touch and kiss, which were amazing and thrilling because she was so intoxicating, was bittersweet. He would count himself truly lucky if one day he knew - not hoped or thought or suspected but _knew_ \- that what he felt for her was returned.

Casey had offered her the opportunity to deliver the repaired - or possibly replaced - Nerd Herder number 3 to Chuck. She had hoped that the cleanup and associated reports and other paperwork destined for a shredder in a few days would allow her to politely decline by phone. But Casey and his resources had been remarkably efficient leaving Sarah free by mid morning.

At midday, when she delivered the vehicle, Sarah had told Chuck that she wasn't sure this was a good idea but he countered with a very rational argument that while she had been a good sport about going out - or staying in - with Morgan and with Ellie and Awesome on a few occasions at least a few of their 'couple time' cover dates should include actually being seen in public rather than fabrications to cover up briefings and intel reviews with Casey.

He further argued that getting to know her 'boyfriend' and the places he grew up frequenting was somewhat expected since he was supposed to be showing her around town anyway. This was a childhood haunt of his and he wanted her to experience it his way rather than have it be forever tainted by Laszlo's attempt to blow it all up. When she considered that delivering the vehicle herself when she could have tasked it out had left her without transportation - though Chuck would undoubtedly drive her anywhere she wanted to go - she wondered just how committed she was to her own protestations.

And so Chuck found himself at Playland Arcade on the Santa Monica Pier with, as far as he was concerned, the most beautiful and intriguing woman he had ever encountered in real life and she seemed to be having a good time playing a few old school video games with him. A few with high scores still boasting his 'CIB' and she had laughed again at his observation that he had been only one letter off from 'CIA' his whole life. He hadn't commented that the one he had never been able to top still listed 'LAZ' as its top scorer.

He shouldn't have been surprised but she picked up the games rather quickly.

All except one.

"Can I just say that for a kick-ass ninja spy girl you really suck at _Mortal Kombat_?" he playfully teased as, after a wiggle of the stick and a button press, his character held up the head and spine of her fallen character as a trophy.

"The block button is stupid," she lamented in frustration at another defeat, this one with a gruesome ending. "Why can't you just pull back on the stick like _Street Fighter_? I kick ass at _Street Fighter_." Sarah continued to comment distractedly. She was sizing up some of the old-school midway games by the far wall.

Chuck swallowed any counter arguments about blocking teleport attacks or the merits of _Virtua Fighter's_ hybrid system. He was swayed by the simple conviction of her position as well as the fact that she _had_ a position on the matter and instead let slip from his mouth "Seriously, marry me." She laughed gleefully at that even as she dismissed it as the joke it almost entirely was and Chuck considered it another victory.

He also hoped it was enough to distract her from the fact that they hadn't actually played _Street Fighter_. In fact, he had noticed earlier that the _Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter_ machine - which in all honesty he also preferred - was out of order. He had given up hoping that she would voluntarily share anything real about herself but on the rare occasion that something small like this slipped through he cherished it.

He always imagined her younger incarnation as 'Little Sarah' regardless of what her real name had once been and apparently Little Sarah used to play _Street Fighter_. He resisted the urge to pry but he knew she played as Chun Li. Nearly every girl who played that game (and a good portion of the boys) played as Chun Li. Nothing against the ER/Mulan lady but they hadn't really done her justice in the movie adaptation. He heard there was going to be another _Street Fighter_ movie coming out but didn't know who was cast as Chun Li yet.

It didn't really matter. Whoever they chose he was confident Sarah was in an entirely different league. It was easy to envision 'Big' Sarah as the undercover Interpol agent hellbent on avenging her father's death with the impossible flying kicks.

He smiled when he remembered how Chun Li's story ended in the original game.

Sarah followed Chuck over to a change machine where he converted another five dollar bill to quarters. Sarah was surprised they didn't use tokens. "You did pretty well on the shooting games." he offered.

Sarah put a hand on her hip indignantly and involuntarily striking a supermodel-esqe pose and a passing teenage boy tripped and bumped into the rail around a _Dance Dance Revolution_ machine. "Pretty well? Please. What was my accuracy score?"

Chuck grinned without looking at her while retrieving his quarters from the chute. "100 percent. Of course. But you were sooooo...slooooooow," he moaned as he feigned drifting into unconsciousness.

She smacked him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand. "Just at first! What's with shooting off screen to reload, anyway? Who came up with that?" Chuck smiled at that. It was another thing he had learned about Sarah. She got mildly irritated when things didn't work the way she thought they should. Here in a non-life threatening scenario it was kind of adorable.

"I think it's just so you can keep shooting as fast as possible," he offered.

"Yeah, but you could smack the bottom of the grip to simulate a new mag or pull the slide back instead. At least do something 'gun-ish' instead of shooting the sky. Dead birds should fall from the sky when you do that. Or shooting the floor... Or your partner."

She smirked as she said that last one. After sighing the first few times she shot off screen she adopted a new habit of making a big show of shooting Chuck every time she reloaded. Whether aiming dramatically with both hands and squinting one eye until he looked away from the screen at her or later blind firing behind her back or her own head without breaking her target acquisition scan or firing rhythm, she thought it was hilarious.

"Both cool ideas but I suppose that's just one more thing that could break on the gun."

"I guess, Mr. Practical," she pouted. Chuck was amused that she seemed so disappointed by the lack of authenticity.

"I don't think realism is the objective. Remember that game with the big sniper rifle and the close-up view video screen inside the scope?" Chuck gestured vaguely at the location of the game and, although it was currently out of their sight, Sarah nodded remembering the _Silent Scope_ game. They hadn't played that one because she only wanted to play games they could play together.

"I was playing that one a couple of years ago and a guy comes up and starts trying to chat with me while I'm playing. Turns out he was an Army recruiter. It was really weird having him yapping about me killing digital terrorists and the opportunities the military could provide."

Sarah chuckled at that. "Was he really trying to say you could be a sniper because of a game?"

"I can't imagine that he really thought that. I guess he was trying to seem like we had something in common or be relatable or something but it just came off really creepy." Chuck didn't want to mention that a 24 year old man playing video games at an arcade at 11:00 am on a Tuesday may have given off the impression that he would be willing to entertain other prospects.

"But c'mon," he continued "I kept up with you pretty good with a pistol on _House of the Dead_ and I kicked your butt at _Mortal Kombat_. That's like halfway to field agent, right?"

"I'll get you a digital badge since you're such a highly trained digital bad-ass." she smiled at him. "Come over here and step into my world."

Chuck had already cleaned up on the Pop-A-Shot machine earlier, making basket after rapid-fire basket and rarely missing. She didn't know why she continued to be surprised by his seemingly endless number of hidden talents and completely untapped athletic potential. She knew he saw himself as gangly and awkward but she also knew that was how she would once have been described. She had also been trained to assess a person's true physical capabilities - whether deliberately hidden or simply raw - to avoid being caught by surprise when someone revealed their true nature or even surprised themselves.

And she could see Chuck's.

When she had commented on his skill at the game he had casually dismissed it as 'one of many useless skills' but she saw the raw potential. Potential she often considered the merits of fostering or stifling - making him better able to defend himself or more likely to get into even more trouble. Sarah eventually got the hang of the game but, distracted by those thoughts, hadn't accumulated nearly as many tickets as Chuck had. After her survey of the arcade, she knew how she could change that.

She dragged him by the hand over to the Skee Ball machines, smiled up at him and held out her free hand. He placed two quarters in her upturned palm and she raised an eyebrow. "I have to ration them. What if you stink at this too?"

She rolled her eyes and put her two quarters in the coin slot. The digital numbers flickered and the machine released nine polished balls into the open tube on the side of the ramp. She picked up one of the balls, tested its heft and held it balanced on just the tips of her fingers between Chuck's face and her own. "Watch and learn." she said as she looked at him over the top of the ball.

Sarah stood cheating toward the left side of the lane and looked back at him. "First, ever wonder why everyone seems to get worse at Skee Ball as you get older?"

She knelt down on her right knee and kept her left foot in front of her pointed toward the concentric circles in the center of the target zone. From this approximation of a child's height, she pushed more than threw the ball toward the center. Chuck thought it looked more like she was trying to play air hockey than Skee Ball.

The first shot was a little short of the 50 point center circle in the center of the bullseye and drifted slightly to the right. Sarah muttered something under her breath about "...never level..." as it bounced down across the rings that encircled the 30 and 40 point targets to score only 20 points. She applied a little counter-clockwise spin to the next shot and it was a little long but right on target. It bounced off the top of the 50 point target and fell to the outmost circle to score 10 points.

"What am I supposed to be learning, exactly?"

She looked up at him and stuck her tongue out at him briefly before they both became overly aware of their relative positions - him standing next to her as she knelt - and she felt the heat rise to her face. She broke the tension between herself and an equally flushed Chuck by holding the next ball up between them as she had done before to emphasize her point.

"Second tip: to consistently score high, stick to the 50 point target." She was dialed in now and the next seven balls all landed in the 50 point circle except for her seventh shot which was slightly short and ended up bouncing into the 40 point circle. She had scored 370 points and a respectable number of tickets poured out. She kept her eyes down range and pointed at the coin slot uttering a distracted "More please."

Chuck dutifully added two quarters and a fresh game started. Sarah reached blindly for the first ball and rolled exactly as she had before and scored 50 points. She smiled and repeated the action eight more times with identical results and a total of 450 points. It was the new daily high on her machine and she looked up and down the row with satisfaction when she saw that it was the highest daily high on all the machines while more tickets than before spat from the machine.

She looked up and smiled at Chuck who had taken a step or two back and was smiling back at her with his arms crossed over his chest. "More?" he asked.

She smiled wider and cheekily said "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Chuck paid for a new game and Sarah spun the first ball against the bumper on the right side of the lane and observed how much extra momentum up the ramp it generated. She shifted her stance to the right side of the lane with her back knee still bent but now slightly off the ground.

"Third tip: if you must go for the really high scores you _have_ to play the bank shot." She rolled toward the upper left corner - this time with a technique more like the bowling motion Chuck had originally expected - bouncing the ball against the wall of the machine after it cleared the ramp. It rattled out of the target scoring only 10 points. But five of the next eight found their mark in the tiny 100 point target in the upper left corner of the target zone. The new high score of 530 points was posted and she politely asked Chuck for another game as the machine spewed tickets.

He set her up for a fourth game and this time seven of nine balls found their mark. The machine spat out the same number of tickets as before but the real reward was in the gasps and murmurs behind her when the new high score of 720 points was posted.

She looked back up to Chuck and pleaded "One more?" He laughed as he looked down at the super spy half-kneeling and looking up at him eagerly - this time seeing another tiny glimpse of Little Sarah rather than an unintentionally slightly-erotic goddess - and he started another game.

Sarah bit her upper lip gently as she rolled seven consecutive 100 point shots. When the eighth caught the lip of the 100 point target and bounced out of the target zone entirely for no points the sound of twenty groans behind her startled her. She hadn't realized how quiet the arcade had been until just then. She smiled and rolled for a cheap 50 to make sure she topped her previous high score and was rewarded with a 750 and another small pile of tickets.

She looked up to see Chuck beaming at her. He offered his hand and she smiled back, took his hand in hers and stood. She half-expected him to pull her close and kiss her. Instead, he raised her hand over her head, spun her around to face the small crowd that had gathered and gestured to Sarah as some applauded but most returned to their games of choice while she gave the onlookers a half curtsy. He leaned in and whispered "You had me expecting a 900."

She shrugged and said "Nobody's perfect," and stooped to gather the tickets in long, stacked strips folded over themselves.

Her back was to him and he muttered it softly so she barely heard his reply.

"It's bad faith to deny your true nature."

She chose not to respond to that - and the irony of not breaking her silence and declaring what he claimed was her true nature was not lost on her.

She pretended she hadn't just heard her Buy More nerd turned government intelligence asset paraphrase Sartre in a thinly veiled description of her as 'perfect', but instead chose to look up at him beaming with both hands full of long strips of prize tickets and say "Let's go shopping!"

.

* * *

.

The massive pile of tickets didn't carry much in actual value. "You can't expect a fortune in tickets from five games of Skee Ball, Sarah." Chuck told her. They had looked over the meager offerings that they could afford with the number of tickets Sarah had accumulated at Skee Ball and settled on two keychains with little plastic figurines attached. Chuck knew exactly which one he wanted. Sarah chose one she thought was cute but also remembered from her childhood.

After they had stepped away Chuck had stopped and turned around. "Wait here a sec," he said as he walked back up to the ticket exchange counter. She watched him reach into the front pocket of his jeans and extract the nearly forgotten haul of tickets from his earlier basketball exhibition and hand them all to the attendant as he pointed at something she couldn't see.

He returned from his 'purchase' with his hands in his pockets looking only slightly guilty. Sarah assumed he had acquired something to add to his odd assortment of collectibles or a gift for Morgan or his sister and decided not to push the issue as they stepped outside into the salty air. She pulled him over to a nearby bench and offered up the prize she had let Chuck select, letting the plastic figurine dangle with the key ring around her ring finger and her fingers splayed as though manipulating a marionette.

"So why this little mustached guy?" she asked as the figurine danced in the air under her hand.

"You don't know Mario? _Super_ Mario?" She just smiled back at him. She knew - she hadn't lived in a cave - she just wanted to hear it from him. "He's my hero. Regular guy. Sucked into a bizarre world. Braves all sorts of crazy dangers to save the princess. It's like life imitating art except the princess usually saves me."

Sarah was glad she had made him explain and smiled at the parallels he had drawn. Though she was no princess. That was just her outer shell. She was a warrior. She was also a curious person and Graham had even acknowledged that her name meant as much when he laughed at her deciphering of her Alpha alias names as meaning 'Warrior Princess'. Or technically, 'Princess Warrior'.

Of course, no one called her Sarah Madison Walker. Even her mother had never used that sequence of sounds to reprimand her. That long lost girl owned another name. The woman she had become was what Graham had intended. The monster with the pretty, disarming face. 'Sarah' was the outward projection. A foolish man's daydream to hide the deadly warrior within. The woman they should fear not fantasize about.

She wondered why Chuck - who saw her so well - couldn't see that. But of course his definition of 'princess' wasn't nearly so limiting. He didn't mind that the role of the princess in his world was to protect him. Though he had done his share of saving as well.

She watched Chuck as he separated his apartment keys from his work keys. The keys to the Nerd Herd company vehicle already had a keychain - a plastic human brain which was a more than appropriate choice for Chuck on multiple levels. She questioned how appropriate it was for some of Chuck's colleagues but - despite the intended interchangeability of the company vehicles - 'Herder number 3' was generally accepted as 'belonging' to Chuck.

When he finished clipping his apartment and locker keys to Super Mario he asked about her choice "So...Smurfette?"

Sometimes it bothered her when he pried too much. Sometimes it pained her that he had such low expectations. "I think it's a safe bet that any girl my age knows Smurfette." She held Smurfette up between them by the key ring and said in a sing-song voice "And she's just so Smurfy."

Chuck laughed at that and Sarah beamed. Chuck was probably the most quick witted person she had ever met and she took pride in the rare occasion when she could make him laugh although she reasoned that he was laughing at the unexpectedness of the word 'Smurfy' coming from her mouth rather than any particular cleverness.

"So who would I be?" he asked. "Casey's clearly Hefty, so I'll concede that title. So maybe Brainy?"

"No way. You're definitely the smartest Smurf in the village but Brainy was kind of an ass. Maybe Jokey? Or Dreamy. I don't think there's a clean fit for you - maybe a mix of Jokey, Dreamy and Handy? I always thought Handy was really smarter than Brainy anyway. And that Smurfette had a little bit of a crush on him."

She turned her head as she said that last part pretending to look down the coastline but really to hide the slight blush she could feel rising up her cheeks.

.

* * *

.

Sarah had wanted to go up in the ferris wheel since she saw it. It was a corny, old-school ride and that's exactly the type of thing she wanted to share with Chuck today. She was a little surprised by his reluctance.

"C'mon. You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

"Umm...not really." he stammered. "Falling, yes. Heights themselves...not so much. It's just...it's just been a long time since I've ridden one of these."

He still seemed reluctant but there wasn't much in the world Chuck wouldn't do for Sarah - despite the fact that he was afraid of heights and his private reflections on the last time he had ridden a similar ride. Still, he had been able to overcome many fears where she was involved lately and it didn't take much effort for her to drag him onto the ride.

He assumed Sarah's mere presence was why the attendant had muttered "Lucky dog." at him as they boarded the ride. Even with the additional effort of physically urging him aboard, he hadn't noticed as Sarah slipped the man several bills.

She didn't let go of his hand as they made a few circles and then smiled widely at him when their carriage slowly stopped at the top.

He smiled back and teased "You do know what people think we're doing up here, right?"

"Let 'em talk." then she turned serious. "No one can hear me up here. I wanted to apologize to you properly for the picture frame. I shouldn't have done that. I know how hard this has been on you and you don't deserve that. I'm sorry."

"Well, Laszlo said I should trust you guys as much as you trust me. He was however a bit off his rocker. Even so, it still seems like decent advice. But I get that its not about me - that its a precaution - and that you're not used to trusting people."

That was an understatement. She was raised not to trust people. Then trained on it some more. It was ingrained in her. Maybe that had left her incapable of trust. And undeserving of it herself. Another case of her becoming what she both hated and feared.

"Occupational hazard." she muttered as she looked away from him and gazed down the shoreline for a few moments before she continued "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."

She didn't think he would hear her and looked back at him in surprise when he finished the quote "And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

She looked back at him as he continued "You are many things, Sarah Walker. Many amazing, wonderful things. But a monster is not one of them."

"How can you know that?" she asked as she looked shyly back at him. Her expression both surprised and concerned him. He had never seen her look so vulnerable and frightened. Trapped at the top of this ferris wheel she had nowhere to run.

"The same way a blind man knows the sun is warm, I suppose. Sometimes you don't have to see all the evidence to know a thing."

Just then the ride started back up and Sarah thought that she both wasted her money by not doing what everyone thought they were doing and that her bribe was quite a bargain. Chuck adopted his usual cheerful smile which had the usual effect of putting a small smile on Sarah's face. "OK, no more spy stuff. Miss Walker." he said emphasizing the 'Miss' and made a show of zipping his lips shut and dropping the 'key' over the side. "Let's just relax and enjoy the view."

"Or I could ask you a question that's been bugging me?"

"Shoot." She cocked an eyebrow and he held his hands up in faux surrender. "A perfectly safe thing to say to _Miss_ Walker. What would you like to know?"

"Why did you almost fail 'Intro to Philosophy' in your sophomore year?" He had referenced Sartre earlier and just quoted Neitzsche and yet his one required philosophy course was one of the few black marks on an otherwise stellar college career.

"I didn't."

"You got a 'D' in that class."

"Yep."

"But you didn't almost fail?"

"Nope."

"Care to explain that?"

"My philosophy professor wouldn't be able to but I'll give it a shot. 'Almost fail' implies that the outcome was ever in doubt. It wasn't. Q. E. D. - I didn't almost fail, I barely passed."

"OK, trusting you now. I am now trusting that this story will not be completely stupid."

Chuck took a deep breath and looked a little sheepish as he replied "Oh, I hate to disappoint you but it _was_ pretty stupid of me. I was young and dumb and kinda full of myself. Scholarship student at Stanford - couldn't tell me anything. So I did all the reading and thought some of it was interesting and some of it was 'Blah' but I had definite opinions on all of it. The instructor had a personal favorite book that he thought was gospel. Ask him his opinion on anything and he would say 'this guy says on page 42...', or 'this guy says on page 1138...' never offering his own opinion and I just couldn't _stand_ that. He's supposed to be teaching, you know, not regurgitating someone else's opinions."

"OK, so why'd you almost fail?"

"I _barely passed_ because he had the weirdest grading system I had ever seen. Never encountered it before or since. You didn't average your scores. Instead, you accumulated points throughout the year so you always knew what grade you had already earned and, based on the points you had failed to obtain, what was the best grade you could hope to earn. I couldn't seem to keep my mouth shut and not get into a pointless debate with this guy every time I attended his class. My GPA was bulletproof enough that my scholarship wasn't at risk. I needed a 'D' to pass and never have to see the guy again so when I accumulated the necessary points..."

He trailed off and Sarah finished for him "...you stopped going."

"Yep. Told you it was stupid." The very idea of a brash, cocky, reckless Chuck seemed completely alien to Sarah. Clearly he had learned some harsh lessons - some of which she knew about - and reined in such behavior.

"Wow. Such a bad boy," she smiled and drawled faux-seductively which prompted an overly dramatic response borrowed from a movie.

"Yeah, you don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Sarah. A rebel."

Sarah snorted adorably as she tried in vain to stifle her laugh and Chuck considered it his greatest victory to date.

.

* * *

.

They continued to explore the pier and the walking path and eventually approached a flower cart full of all manner of flora where Chuck had a moment of inspiration. A particularly pretty bloom caught his eye. "I'll take one of those lilies there." and he pointed to a large white flower with six perfectly spaced petals which all curled slightly backward toward its stem.

The lady working the cart was about to correct him but Sarah interjected. She didn't want the lady to over-explain his selection. "Actually, those are called tuberoses, Chuck."

"Is that bad?" he asked when he saw a strange sadness in her eyes.

It was gone as quickly as it had come. She smiled bittersweetly and answered honestly. "No, it's lovely. Good choice. Really good choice, actually." Leave it to him to choose the perfect flower without really knowing why. He was magical like that. It may not be the way either of them wanted it to be but it really was the perfect choice.

While he paid, Chuck watched as Sarah wandered the length of the cart and stopped at a large white flower. She cupped it gently in both hands and nearly buried her nose in it as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Chuck watched in awe as The Agent melted away for just a moment and only the woman beneath remained. In those precious few seconds, all her worries melted away and her lips curled up in a blissful smile. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Chuck discretely asked the lady what flower it was that had caught Sarah's attention and he filed the answer away in his repository of facts about Sarah. A database in his mind completely separate from the one that had brought her into his life. He stepped up to her and reached out uncertainly to tuck the flower he had bought behind her right ear., pausing only to see if she would allow it. Her only correction, without really thinking about it, was to say "No Chuck, left side," and she helped him place it so it would stay put.

Only when the flower lady smiled at her did she realize what she had done. She doubted that Chuck realized the significance and just as seeing her blissfully losing herself in the scent of a flower had made Chuck's night, the way he was looking at her now made hers. It was just for a moment but it made any missteps - any accidental reveals - that she had made inconsequential. Seeing him look at her that way made the whole afternoon worthwhile.

"I hope this wasn't part of the playbook when you used to come here with Morgan?" she teased.

"No, this was uniquely you. But I suppose we could put some flowers in his beard."

.

* * *

.

They stopped at Big Dean's for a late lunch or early dinner consisting of a couple of fish tacos for him and an Ahi sandwich for her. Chuck insisted on paying and Sarah let him, both because of and despite the fact that it made the day seem more like a 'real' date.

"I think these are fascinating." Chuck had said randomly and Sarah looked to see three small, white packets of pepper in his hand.

"Why's that?"

"Well, once upon a time, people sailed across oceans, risked their lives, to bring back spices from one part of the world or the other. There's spices in fancy little jars that people still have to go a little out of their way for but these - salt and pepper - what d'ya even call these little things?"

"Sachets."

"Sachets? Really? Hmm. So these little sachets of salt and pepper, you just grab a fist full of them and maybe you use one or two or maybe not even all of one but you usually throw away more than half of what you grabbed. Something people used to risk their lives for, thrown away in the garbage because it's so easy to get your hands on. Pepper only came from one place with all these dangerous trade routes and salt? You can make it most anywhere but it was still valuable. They used to trade people for salt. And vice versa. Can you imagine?"

"Ancient Greece. In Rome, people were paid in salt too. It's where the word salary comes from. And sorry but those dangerous trade routes? Exaggerated quite a bit to scare people off."

"Seriously?"

"Yep. Who wants to fight the dragon that guards the pepper? Early misinformation tactics."

"I'm so disappointed," he smiled contradictorily. He loved that she knew these things. And random facts she was comfortable sharing because they neither revealed too much about her nor implied any particular reason for her knowing them. Just that she was incredibly smart and knew a lot about a lot. He couldn't say it but it made her about ten times more sexy which he didn't think was at all possible.

"Surely there's enough wonder in the world without dragons?"

"Oh, there are definitely wondrous things in the world," he said looking deliberately at her.

And she tried not to react to that comment or to the fact that he shared a wanderlust that a younger her had felt as she probed to see if it was truly something he had considered. "Things you want to see?"

"Sure. Europe. The Alps. I've always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. Have you ever been?"

She hid her disdain for that one location well because the answer applied to everywhere she had been. She had wanted to see the world. Not travel it but _see_ it and things just hadn't worked out that way. "To Paris. Not the tower. I've been lots of places. But I haven't really seen them."

"Well, world traveller, where have you always wanted to go?"

"Switzerland. Well, Geneva, but Switzerland in general. And Holland."

"Tulips and windmills. Sounds nice. And is Geneva near the Alps?" At her nod he continued, "Maybe... Maybe we'll get to see them someday. Not just go but really see."

She appreciated the fact that he didn't explicitly say 'together', although it was implied. His careful wording allowed her to answer every possible version of the question the way she wanted to. _There are all kinds of ways to lie._ Especially to yourself.

"That'd be nice."

.

* * *

.

Shortly thereafter they began walking up Ocean Front Walk hand in hand still sipping their soft drinks from the can. She wasn't sure when his hand had found hers - or vice versa - but she was perfectly content to walk along with their fingers intertwined.

Chuck pointed out a landmark from his childhood or landmarks that had changed over time here and there but they mostly walked together in companionable silence. She knew they reached their destination somewhere between California Avenue and Washington Avenue when she instinctively veered left to leave the footpath and walk out on the beach at the same moment that he had.

As she stopped to take her shoes off he slipped out of his Buy More wind breaker and deftly removed both the plush item and the small box he had been carrying around in his pocket. When she resumed walking he traded with her, draping the jacket over her strong shoulders and taking the shoes off her hands.

They sat down together as they had the first morning they had been here together with him on her right, probably closer than they should have but Sarah no longer cared. She had known this was where they were going to end up once Chuck took her to the pier. It was the best date of her young life despite its questionable classification as a date - and would likely have been even if it were not the only thing close to a real date that she had ever been on.

He had asked her when she had last seen a sunset and at her embarrassed silence he suggested it as their official closing event for today. As much as she wished she could take it farther toward the natural conclusion of a real date, when he leaned back and placed his left hand in the sand behind her she settled for taking the opportunity to snuggle into his side and lay her head on his shoulder.

"It's chilly." she offered as her reasoning. It had been right around 60 degrees all day and though the wind was slightly stronger out here in the open Chuck was perfectly comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt. He had always run a little hot and he was too smart to argue.

Sarah had experienced far colder climates both as an agent and as a child. In neither case had she always been properly attired. And while she wouldn't have described any of those situations as 'comfortable' she had survived. So Chuck's additional body heat wasn't strictly necessary but it made her think that what could be a cold and miserable night anywhere in the world would be the very definition of comfortable if she were cuddled up with the human furnace next to her.

She considered all the similarities revealed both over her time in Burbank and today. Both with various parental failures, she wondered whether they could either be described as orphans despite all four parents - to the best of either of their knowledge - still being alive. The love of knowledge of different types, the desire to travel, the smart humor. If only she had known he existed when she was a lonely teenager.

The sun was starting to turn the blue sky orange and she broke the silence without removing her head from his shoulder. "It really is beautiful here. Thank you for sharing it with me. And hey, no bombs this time."

"We really are a different sort of couple, aren't we?"

Sarah didn't trust herself to respond to that. She wished she could explain the feelings she had for him - how important he had become to her - but not only did she not fully understand it herself she didn't want to elevate his hopes knowing she would always have to shoot him back down. Keep him at arm's length or lose him forever.

She felt him sigh as though her thoughts had been spoken aloud and then he gently offered "I have something for you."

She lifted her head from his shoulder to see what he was talking about to find him holding a small gift wrapped box between them. It was a little smaller than an economy sized box of matches and covered in shiny silver wrapping paper with a simple white ribbon seeming to divide it into four equal rectangles.

"What's this?" she smiled despite herself.

"Since we're blazing new trails in the definition of 'couple' I decided to get you a Halloween present. Sorry it's a little late. I forgot to grab it from my locker yesterday so I grabbed it early this morning."

She reached out for it and hesitated before looking over at him questioningly. When he nodded pointedly to go ahead he was rewarded with another glimpse of Little Sarah when she snatched it form his outstretched palm and gleefully ripped off the paper.

She then opened up the box and dismantled the excessive amount of packing material and pulled out a red iPod nano. "I figured it was time to get serious about your musical education," he offered as an explanation.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek and told him in as many words that he shouldn't have wasted his money on her.

He told her not to worry. And felt a little guilty for lying when he told her it was an unclaimed refurbishment that he got a great deal on. Which was completely untrue but was what Morgan had suggested only with an earlier model. The 3rd gen nanos had just been released and were in high demand. Chuck however had insisted on the latest and, for the first time in his life, paid a premium for the color of a technological device simply because he embraced the irrational thought that the basic colors weren't good enough for her.

"So how does it work?" Sarah asked as she rocked forward and sat up on her knees excitedly, device in hand and turning slightly to face him.

Chuck explained the basics showing her how to charge it, telling her how many songs it could hold (which surprised her) and the basic functions as best he could with it not currently having any battery life. He had also done a jailbreak to the file system so she could get her own account that it would recognize or he could load files to it if she wanted any suggestions. He apologized for not having charged it as though that had not been part of his plan.

"Come by when you get a chance and I'll load up some tunes for you. I only added one song for now so you can play with it and see if you like it after you charge it tonight. There's also this."

Her surprise was barely perceptible as he held out the little stuffed pink bunny he had acquired at the arcade. "'Cause, you know, together there's nothing we can't face...except for bunnies."

He sighed at the quizzical look he received in response. "Once we've addressed your musical education were going to have to work on the gaps in your television knowledge starting with the Whedon-verse."

Sarah ignored her own confusion over that last bit and just smiled at the normalcy of the moment and his earnest desire to share his interests with her. She also chose to ignore for the moment the oddity of her complete absence of pop culture knowledge from the past decade and the many personal and professional reasons that she shouldn't be allowing him to worm his way past her defenses as she sat back down and leaned back into his shoulder to watch orange turn to purple.

"You're pretty good at this whole boyfriend thing, you know? I'll bet I'm the only girl on my block who got a Halloween present, let alone two. Thank you."

.

* * *

.

They had spent the forty-five minutes looking out over the ocean with her snuggled into his side - for warmth, she repeatedly insisted - and her head on his shoulder. Chuck would have been content to stay like this all night and didn't dare stretch this already incredibly flimsy cover excuse any further.

Sarah had considered and rejected the idea of telling him they couldn't stay like this forever several times before she finally spoke. "We have to go. The sun's almost down." Using celestial events as a reason seemed to be her only option.

"Is this some kind of Cinderella-type thing?" he chuckled. Sarah decided in that moment that as much as she enjoyed the warmth of his loose embrace and how safe and cherished it made her feel the absolute best thing about lying in his arms like this was the way his laughter rumbled through his chest. The way she felt it as much as heard it.

"No, I'm not going to turn into a pumpkin," she said as she reluctantly lifted her head and straightened her body. She wasn't cold but missed his warmth immediately. _I just don't trust myself here with you after dark_ she thought to herself.

He turned his head to face her. "That's not how it works."

"What do you mean?" she was focused more on the loss of contact between their two bodies and honestly hasn't given much thought to her 'pumpkin' comment.

"Well...I guess the Herder would turn into the pumpkin." Chuck said referring to the Buy More company vehicle that had been returned - or more likely, replaced this morning - and that he had used to drive them both to the pier a few hours ago. But he had a vague thought that was starting to crystallize in his mind and his eyes locked onto hers more intensely as he started to describe the parallels he saw. "Everything _around_ Cinderella turned into something else. Nothing was as it seemed."

He paused and Sarah thought to herself that he couldn't possibly be talking about what it seemed he was talking about. But there it was. He hadn't been comfortable lying to the important people in his life since day one. They had talked about it on this very beach - how no one could be trusted - and then she realized that, as applicable as it was to his life now, he was actually talking about hers. 'Everything around Cinderella' he had said. This was the second princess reference he had made this afternoon. She knew the first was directed at her and suspected this one would be as well.

He was so sweet to her despite the constant danger that had accompanied her appearance in his life. And she wasn't allowed to show how much it affected her even though all he desperately wanted was some small indication that his words weren't falling on deaf ears. If only he knew.

When her face revealed to him that she had realized he was talking about her, he continued "But when she won the prince's heart she was still Cinderella, even though she never told him her name."

Alarm bells were sounding in her head. Just a few weeks ago he had pleaded with her to share her true name and she had nearly cracked. If it weren't for the repository of facts about people like her in his mind - and the dark, dark secrets it might reveal - she would have caved. What was he trying to tell her now?

"After midnight she was still Cinderella." His lips were so close to hers that she could no longer comfortably see them. Looking in his eyes instead she could feel her resolve wavering.

"Everything around them - all of the illusions - they didn't matter. She couldn't hide who she was underneath it all. Who she really was. To him she was always simply the princess who won his heart."

As his eyes started to close and hers began to do the same as he leaned closer and she could feel his breath on her face, tantalizingly close.

God DAMN him! She startled back to her senses - eyes wide, breath short - nearly drawn in to a warm, inviting place she would never be able to pull herself back out of. This was too real. Too raw. No cover excuses or witnesses to hide behind. If she had done..._that_...all avenues of retreat would have been cut off. It wasn't about a kiss. It was about revealing her true self.

Sarah stood up abruptly and strode determinedly back to the footpath as she tried her best to regain her senses and breathe normally. She stopped just before the path. It wasn't him that she was angry with. Not really.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning to look at him. He hadn't followed. He was still sitting there watching the last bit of sun fall off the edge of the earth. As afraid of looking directly at her as she was of looking at him. She could still go back to him. She could tackle him to the sand and do everything to him she had been fantasizing about all afternoon. It was what she wanted. But she hadn't been free to do what she truly wanted in so long she couldn't remember the last time it had been possible.

She looked down at her bare feet just inches away from the sidewalk. If she stepped onto the path it was over. It was the border between the real world and this little spit of sand that held some kind of power over both of them. It had always been his special place no matter how many others frequented it. It was some kind of mystical, eternal connection. This small stretch of beach came into being eons ago and lay dormant waiting for him to awaken its power. And when she sought him out here and watched over him that first night it somehow became hers too.

She looked back at him one last time. He was sitting there hugging his knees as he had done that first night. Even from behind he looked impossibly lost and alone. But she had a job to do. This cover date hadn't been the worst idea in the world but securing a cover required an audience. What had almost happened between just the two of them with no witnesses to justify it was something entirely different.

It was her responsibility to protect him and it was something she was unwilling to trust to anyone but herself. Somehow when she wasn't looking he had become important to her and all the reasons she wanted to abandon that duty were all the reasons she couldn't allow herself to. Maybe she could be satisfied with the crumbs of a real life they had stolen under the guise of a cover but he wasn't a shadow of a real person like she was. Everything he did, he did with his whole, beautiful heart. And he deserved someone who still had a heart to give.

She was the most deadly woman in the world entrusted with the protection of the man who held the most dangerous secrets of their government. She wasn't free to play this game. She was no princess. She didn't even want to be. But for the first time in her life she wondered if she could be.

She closed her eyes and whispered "I'm so sorry" before turning and stepping onto the path.

.

* * *

.

She waited there for him for what seemed like forever but was probably only four or five minutes. When he unwound his long legs and brushed the sand off his rear she finally felt herself breathe although it hurt - she became aware of the tightness in her throat and ache in her chest. He approached, unwilling or unable to look her in the eyes.

When he neared the path he stopped just short of it as she had done moments ago behind his back. With him on the loose sand and her on the sidewalk they stood eye to eye. He looked up at her and simply said "Hey."

His brief bout of eloquence had run its course and his mind was scrambling to find a way to repair the damage. Neither one of them knew how to bring the evening to an end - they both knew what was and was not allowed - and he knew he had over-reached. But he didn't want to end the evening with her pushing him away or worse withdrawing into herself.

She responded by reaching out her hand toward him and saying "I need my shoes." She hadn't even realized she had abandoned her footwear when she had fled from him.

He held them by his side. "In a minute. First, I want you to play one last game with me."

"Chuck. Just give me my shoes. Please?" She was really pleading for him to step on to the path. If she were to step toward him she would join him on the sand and that suddenly seemed like the most terrifying place in the world for her to be. When he made no move toward her she relented. She crossed her arms defiantly and jutted out her left hip. "Fine. What's your game?"

Chuck knew he had pushed her too hard but didn't want to taint their day by obsessing over the status quo. "It's simple, really. But first, I'm sorry that I got carried away. I like spending time with you and I don't want there to be anything weird between us. I know what I can't have. Now...close your eyes."

She hadn't expected that last bit. Both the comment about what he couldn't have and the request to close her eyes. "Wha...why?"

"Because if we leave now this is just another part of the cover. I want to remember this like it was something that just 'is' or 'was'. Please. Close your eyes."

"Just come over here and give me my shoes."

Chuck looked down at her toes on the edge of the path flexed as though balanced on the edge of some great precipice. "No. I'm not setting foot on that sidewalk until you play my game."

"It's just a sidewalk, Chuck."

His sad smile made her think he somehow sensed the power she had granted to the sidewalk in her own mind. Here she was in control. But as long as he stayed in the sand her control did not extend to him. In fact his influence encroached and seemed to plead with her to relinquish that control. "Of course it is. So, close your eyes."

"Fine." She wanted to move this along and get as far away from here as possible. She thought of his words - 'I know what I can't have' - it hurt too much. She glanced around to make sure there were no immediate threats approaching and she closed her eyes.

Once he was satisfied that she wasn't peeking he closed his own eyes and spoke. "I wasn't kidding about coming here with Morgan all the time. When I was a kid, a teenager, I always wanted to have a day like today with a beautiful girl who thought I was interesting and fun. I want you to think back to when you felt the same way. However old you were, wherever you were, whoever the guy was."

He could feel her about to protest that those were things he couldn't know so he quickly added "I don't need to know. It's just for you." Chuck couldn't yet see it but Sarah's face had started to relax.

"You with me?" Chuck asked. He peeked and saw her smile a bit and nod. He didn't want to let on that he was peeking so he prodded with a "Hmm?"

Her lips were dry and it came out as a whisper. "Yes."

"Good." And he closed his eyes again. "Now I want you to think about today - replay it in your mind - everything you enjoyed about today. Hopefully a lot of the things you did today. You don't have to worry about what any of it means or whether it was a good or bad idea because it happened a long time ago. To that girl...in that place...with that guy. It's not a date or a cover date, it's just a fond memory."

He paused to let his words sink in before continuing. "Can you picture that girl? Err...that woman?" he corrected, hoping to bait her into the full scope of his plan.

"Chuck, I can't be that woman. I have a job to do." She peeked and looked around them to make sure they were still safe and weren't being overheard. "I'm an agent. Not a woman. I'm not even a woman who is an agent. Just the agent."

Then she looked at him with his eyes closed and a broad grin on his face. Despite what she had just said she desperately wanted to kiss him. He kept his eyes closed as he spoke. "I was hoping you'd say something like that. But we're not talking about the woman you are - the amazing woman you are - we're focusing on the woman you were when this memory happened. Remember, it happened long before we met so I won't even know to ask you about it unless you decide to share it with me. We won't talk about it unless you want to."

She sighed, closed her eyes again and tried her best to follow his instructions. It was similar to a torture resistance technique. Compartmentalization in the extreme. Some people called it going to your 'happy place' but it was more than that. Chuck had shared that this was his childhood ideal of a date so she tried to think of what the comparable experience would have been for her.

She saw the scene in her mind and cursed her lack of creativity. She was herself but different. An unburdened version of herself. A Sarah who could laugh freely and not look over her shoulder and kiss a man if she wanted to and if he had proven himself worthy.

She was surprised that she identified herself as 'Sarah' in her mind's eye until she visualized the man she was with. It was as though he had told her 'don't think of a white elephant' and the trick had worked. Of course it was Chuck. And she realized that - like his Cinderella analogy - no matter what else changed in the scene around them, as long as she was with him she would always be Sarah.

They were both younger but not children. Maybe her as she should have been in college and him as he actually was when he was in college - or at least how she visualized he was before his expulsion. And the place was this beach. The pier. The arcade. It was a little more G-rated than she would have liked but otherwise it was a perfect day - he would never believe it but it was the only real date she had ever been on - and this way, if he kept his side of the bargain, she didn't have to pretend it never happened or try to explain it away.

She accepted the premise of the game - that he wouldn't make this day about covers or rules. That he wouldn't bring it up and make a big deal of it. He would just let her have the memory. And then a huge smile overtook her face when she realized that was exactly what he had been hoping would happen. Given the realities of their situation, it was the most unselfish thing he could have possibly done.

As if he had known she had reached that realization, Chuck spoke "Now open your eyes."

He had joined her on the path. The spell was broken. He had cheated. He must have opened his eyes because her shoes had been laid next to her feet. She stepped into them and silently thanked him for not referring to them as glass slippers even though she now thought of them that way. _Because_ she now thought of them that way.

"Back to the real world?" he asked as he reached out his hand to her wondering if he would ever get the chance to discuss this day with her.

She realized the double meaning behind his question. From a cover date back to the real world? From a daydream or a memory back to the real world? Both the date and the daydream it had become had come to an end. But he had given her a way to hold on to it without regrets forever. His true gift to her.

Before she reached her hand out to his, she chanced her sanity on one more look at the horizon. The sun was gone. All the coaches should have turned to pumpkins and all the horses turned to mice. She was not a princess.

But she was still Sarah.

.

* * *

.

048: Message to No One - Day 47

When Sarah returned to her room the first thing she did was plug in her new iPod so it could charge. The second was to pause for a moment to gaze in the mirror over the dresser and admire the flower in her hair. Tuberoses. They weren't roses at all and looked so different when individual florets like this one were in full bloom rather than their usual state of twenty or so closed bulbs on a single stem. And it smelled heavenly.

What were the odds that they would even be available at the cart much less that he would have chosen this flower? He just thought it was pretty and didn't care about the secret meaning it held in the so-called ancient language of flowers or more recent Victorian lore. She wondered for a moment if he could approach her the same way - care only about what he could see and perceive and not worry about the rest.

She stepped into her bathroom and located the basket of supplies next to her in-room coffee maker and retrieved two coffee filters. Then she extracted the always reliable gift of the Gideons from the nightstand drawer. She had planned to spread the petals out on one filter, lay another on top and close the entire sandwich between the Bible's pages. But the flower's trumpet like shape was problematic and even though it was dying from the moment it was cut she couldn't bring herself to squash it just yet.

She could press it flat from the side or slit the petals with a knife to spread them radially. She decided to think over her approach while she took a quick shower to rid herself of the sand that had managed to inevitably find it's way into unwanted places. And wondered at the fact that she was even thinking about bothering to press another flower - something she hadn't done since she was a little girl before coming to Burbank.

While she was drying her hair with a towel she contemplated her three physical gifts from the day. A simple gift of a flower that maybe she instilled with more meaning than he had intended, a pink stuffed bunny and a device to embark upon the musical education he had all but promised on their ill-fated first date and begun a few nights ago.

She also considered his ability to see through this strange world he had found himself in. He not only deduced Lazslo's plan - the intersect had helped but Chuck's preexisting knowledge of the layout of the pier had been the key - and then he had trusted his instincts when Laszlo had told him the wrong wire to cut. He saw through the lies and acted on what he knew was right.

Of course, she and - to her surprise - Casey had sanitized that element from their report to their superiors. They were under the assumption that Laszlo had defeated the fingerprint recognition himself. And Chuck, true to form, fixated on the fact that he had inadvertently bypassed it as part of Laszlo's devious plan rather than all the other brave, selfless things he had done.

As she dressed for bed in a simple grey tank and powder blue boy shorts she considered that Chuck also managed to see through her. Some part of him knew his interest in her was not entirely unreciprocated but also knew not to push. She didn't want to fully explain the reasoning behind not allowing anything physical to develop not excusable by their cover.

Primarily because she didn't like her own decision to allow the lines between cover and reality to blur. She shouldn't enjoy her time with him so much. Nor their limited physical contact. Just seeing him smile was electric and thrilling and actually _enjoying_ the physical contact was not at all something she would have expected herself to permit as part of a cover. She had eventually succumbed with Bryce but this was different. She was supposed to be setting the example for Chuck to follow and she felt like she was failing miserably.

A more brazen man would trust what he saw and boorishly attempt to press the issue physically but he always deferred to her. No doubt trying to figure out the rules. Or possibly whether he was reading her correctly. She suspected her own reaction to being pressed on this issue physically would be just as severe for Chuck as any other presumptuous suitor.

Yet his remarkable restraint - even in their near miss tonight - showed a respect and understanding of her that he shouldn't know enough to have. That only made her want him more. And it wasn't fair because all the things she didn't want to clarify were translated within him to doubts about himself that he didn't deserve to feel. Especially because his self doubt and her own willpower were the only things apparently strong enough to maintain this tenuous status quo between them. And her willpower was failing.

It was that lingering doubt that she could not afford to alleviate. She regretted that his own feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty were her only defense against him but far more was at risk than her unfamiliar burgeoning feelings. A nation's security, of course, but also the safety, relative freedom and emotional well being of a surprisingly charming and sweet young man. She considered that maintaining this cover, as surprisingly fulfilling and soul renewing and just pleasant as it was for her, might be terribly frustrating and possibly embarrassing for all the wrong reasons. Yet, even realizing how selfish it was, she couldn't bear the idea of letting go of even this partial intimacy between them.

Having not done so in several days, Sarah felt the need to add to her video log and document some of the changes she had observed. It would also be an additional data point to justify Chuck remaining relatively free in his hometown rather than extracted to some sort of intel processing or detention facility. So she retreived her video camera and began.

"Day 47: Chuck has shown an uncanny degree of insight. We wouldn't have been able to stop Mahnovski without him. It is his ability to apply the insights of the Intersect to the world around him that further justify keeping him entrenched in the familiar, with his family and friends. Upsetting that balance would require starting over with unpredictable results. He has already shown an ability to adapt to the new expectations put upon him and preserve our cover for interactions with him. That same insight may make him difficult to control but that is why we trust him to make the proper assessments and act accordingly rather than coerce his behavior. He's adapting well."

After turning off the camera she continued to think about her final point. He was adapting. Changing. Learning how to operate within _their_ rules. She wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.

She checked to see if her new present was charged and started playing with it. Chuck said he had only put one song on it and based on recent comments she had expected to see the words 'Arcade Fire'. Given their cover date was at an arcade it would have been a fitting way to memorialize the evening. She chuckled at the memory of Chuck describing the band's first album as an 'auditory aphrodisiac'. If that were truly the case it probably wouldn't be a good idea to listen to it if it were just the two of them together in Chuck's bedroom. But here in the refuge of her hotel room maybe she could indulge in those thoughts.

She removed the iPod from its charger and found that the one song Chuck had loaded was already queued up. It wasn't Arcade Fire. She was surprised that when she saw the name of the artist, recognized the title and couldn't help but smile as she thought back to one of the last things he had said before they left the beach together.

_I was hoping you'd say something like that..._

_...the amazing woman you are..._

That little shit.

She couldn't stop the smile spreading across her face. She should be more irritated by the fact that he can play her like this but it doesn't make her feel at all threatened when he does it. When he does it, he does it to try to make her happy. When he does it, it makes her feel...adored.

She put in the ear buds and pressed play as Chuck had demonstrated. She listened to it once through to play with the device but was completely distracted by Chuck's choice of song.

A few lines had caught her attention the first time through and she didn't find it all that flattering. References to killing with a smile, casual lies, only revealing what she wants someone to see felt like he was throwing all the things he hated about the spy-world in her face. And she had never _carelessly_ cut anyone though there had been a few she had laughed at as they bled. But they had been cut quite deliberately.

It was the only song available. He had planned it that way. So when she listened a second time she focused on different lines. She certainly had been only revealing what she wanted Chuck to see. It wasn't an accusation of any kind, just a fact. And maybe she was hiding in a lot of ways - and had been for a very long time - though like a child seemed a bit harsh.

It was a song about flaws but there were elements that softened the message somewhat. Being able to bring out both the best and the worst in someone sounded like a wondrous thing to her. Chuck had been in a mild but long depression before his life was turned upside down by the Intersect and he had handled all the madness since remarkably well. Those who weren't aware of the dangerous elements of his new situation remarked how improved his mood had been recently and some people attributed that to her. Even knowing the true nature of their relationship, she hoped it was at least partly true.

If they brought out the worst in one another it was out of frustration. And there wouldn't be frustration without passion. And even though they weren't free to explore that passion - it would be dangerous and unfair to everyone involved to do so - it was undeniably there. It was what had caused her to storm off at the end of their date tonight. She had wanted to stay but it just wasn't possible. Since distancing herself from Chuck wasn't really a viable option she would just have to learn to better cope with those uncomfortable situations where restraint was required.

She continued to listen on repeat as she completed her craft project from earlier, carefully flattening the slightly wilted flower with a slit on both sides to allow the petals to fan out somewhat but preserve some of the trumpet shape. Once she firmly pressed it down between coffee filters and the pages of the Bible she opened the Bible again toward the back and smiled at the now thoroughly dried large pink daisy similarly sandwiched between two coffee filters for the past six weeks.

Now that she had listened so closely for any possible hidden meanings and memorized every word she wasn't entirely sure it was a love song. It was a song about how a man perceived a woman and maybe how he felt about her - not despite of her flaws - but because of them. Because they made her who she was. Defined her. And everything that anyone else might consider a flaw he found fascinating.

As she pulled down the covers and landed one knee on the mattress about to slide under them she paused to contemplate the small pink bunny resting on her pillow. She had silently named him Fido as a suitable homage to the stuffed companion of her childhood. She wanted to lay with it clutched to her chest as she once had done with its predecessor from years and years ago.

She briefly considered getting up to secure it in her go bag but thought of the pink flower she had inexplicably saved when she thought she would be done with this mission in a matter of days. It and the newer addition to the Gideons' Bible, as well as the stuffed rabbit, would all have to be destroyed when she moved on. But the end seemed less imminent and she thought that, before it all inevitably came crashing down, she could continue to indulge herself in whatever small ways presented themselves as long as no one got hurt.

As she closed her eyes she thought back to the song Chuck had given to her and wondered if it were truly possible for someone to care for another not despite of the things that made them who they were but because of them. To fully accept them as they were without judgment or as some sort of compromise. Even as she fell asleep she called herself a fool for thinking such things despite the lingering smile on her lips as she clutched a tiny stuffed bunny.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: This partly came about because we know later (Cougars) that Sarah does own an iPod (or inexplicably buys speakers for one if she doesn't own one) yet she knows next to nothing about (popular) music. This cannot stand! Considering where Chuck works, the need to resolve this inconsistency became a compulsion. This particular iPod was the second year of Product RED - intended to raise awareness / prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Hopefully you were all able to decipher the identity of the song from the context. It does contain the 'L' word but not blatantly - more as a hypothetical - and I think Chuck would be careful not to go there. I wonder what other meaningful songs he might load for her...

And there are just SO many obscure references in the 'cover' date. I wonder how many you spotted? Here are a few...

FWIW, Sarah and I are of the same opinion regarding the Mortal Kombat 'block' button although I do appreciate its gameplay purposes and the skill of those who can use it effectively. I was more into Tekken. (Until I met opponents who knew the combo breaks for King's chain throws... Bastards.) Two other elements are autobiographical. And can we all just agree to view Smurfette through an innocent seven year old girl's eyes rather than the awful subtext attributable to the 'lone female smurf intended to sow discord by her mere presence' depicted in most versions? (For those unaware, in one version Smurfette was initially a spy! And let's also ignore any tiny, brunette mermaids.)

The mystery of Graham's joke regarding Sarah's name is revealed! Madison (although also possibly variants of other names) means Son of Maud (a great warrior) and therefore, warrior. If you've read much Chuck fan fic you know Sarah is Hebrew for princess. So, Graham effectively named her Warrior Princess. Told you it was a bad joke. But hey, it's Graham.

In the ancient language of flowers - the kind of obscure thing Sarah might know - tuberoses can mean many things: voluptuousness (nah...), dangerous pleasures (...closer) and my reason for choosing it: forbidden pleasures. Hawaiian custom says that wearing a flower on your right means you are single, available and approachable. Wearing it on the left - as Sarah instructs (same side as a wedding ring if you have trouble remembering) - means you are happily involved. (Or want to be left alone!)

There are two Easter Eggs in the Street Fighter discussion. The more important one is that, in the original Street Fighter II (where Chun Li was first introduced) every fighter has a specific story ending. Chun Li's is that after avenging her father she decides to live the life of a normal girl.

Chun Li was portrayed by Ming Na (of ER and Mulan fame, and currently killing it as Agent Melinda May in Marvel's Agents of Shield) in the 1994 JCVD Street Fighter film (12 percent on Rotten Tomatoes!) and later by none other than Kristin Kreuk in the 2009 Legend of Chun Li spinoff movie (18 percent!).

Important Schedule Notice: I am taking one full update cycle off for the holidays. That will give me a much needed brain-break and allow some readers to catch up! I will still be doing some writing just not at the same pace or fretting over editing and posting. I took great pains to leave you with this 'date' before taking that break (hello, 20K updates). I have also committed some quality lapses lately so I'm not going to promise updates every two weeks. I will shoot for that but may take longer, especially if the length of a given installment gets a little excessive.

'Becoming' is planned to resume on or around Jan 19 of next year. Thank you all for your support, have a Merry Christmas (and/or Happy Holiday Season to those who observe otherwise but Merry Christmas from me) and God bless us, every one!


	19. XIX Man, Ocular Bat and the Unusual Hoon

...wherein Chuck continues his musication of Sarah Walker, Graham's Enforcer nearly makes its appearance and secrets are both exposed and deduced...

Canon Reference: Continuation of the insert from last installment leading into the events of episode 107 (Alma Mater) continued slightly beyond the closing credits

Contents: Six chapters. As usual, started out much smaller and ballooned to the 20K you see here (including over 2K words of research notes and associated trivia, a month's worth of musings!).

The first long chapter (6,100 words) is your fluff in three parts - my version of a song fic - the first two parts are around 2,200 and 2,700 words and the third is shorter at about 1,250. The remaining five chapters (and remaining 12K words) are more canon driven and divided into five chapters mostly around 2,500 each with a couple of shorter ones. The best break point is after the first chapter (Ch 49).

* * *

A/N: I hope everyone had a lovely holiday and return to you on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Not to dilute the (clearly still sorely needed) message of striving toward an end to racial inequality but let it serve a reminder of the need for equality for _all_. I will wish you all a thoughtful rather than 'happy' holiday today. Now, back to our program...

You should have this one with coffee because its half-and-half! Not really, in terms of ratios, but there's some more quasi-fluff and then we'll jump back into the thick of things. There are some scenes that are likely to meet with some/much dissent but it's something I wanted to see play out and things already mentioned of which the reader may need reminding.

See end notes for the attribution of the very strange 'headline' title of this installment. Also see end notes for a song title / phrase used as a chapter title but not intended to mean what you think it means (thanks, Inigo). I'm working on the rarely attempted quadruple entendre for the next Olympic games. (Derp!)

* * *

CHUCK-verse Timeline: For November 2007, after the first anchor point, I am abandoning specific dates and I strongly encourage you to do the same. There are numerous conflicts between implied story time, Halloween, Thanksgiving (a hard anchor in Nemesis and an early Thanksgiving in 2007 - Nov 22), college football Saturdays, Days 49 and 56 of Sarah's video log (and the implied story time between them), duration of the Lou courtship, etc. that are impossible to fully reconcile elegantly. November is a hot mess.

* * *

Regarding the Perils of Excessive Research (Part II): I previously commented on the very brief glimpse of Chuck's academic transcript during Chuck's flash on himself in 'Alma Mater' but that flash also contains a 'Personality Assessment' that is worth a peek before making any judgments as to what is in and out of 'character' for Chuck.

Although likely just as much of a throw away as his academic transcript there are some surprising results in there that _may_ show some indication of what may have been on the wall of the proverbial writers' room as they worked to evolve Chuck. I actually doubt they put that much thought into it but many of these 'surprising' results are not so surprising if you consider that the agent he eventually 'became' is the same person that was targeted for recruitment in the first place before Bryce and Jill crushed his spirit and suppressed those traits.

If so, his 'evolution' is more of a reemergence of that basic personality than a change to it. (Also note that Chuck supposedly lived on 'frat row' but his address is Santa Clara and his 'permanent' address is Hartford, CT - nowhere near the greater Los Angeles area - Hmm...)

* * *

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied.

Additionally, no ownership or claim to various songs I would rather not disclose at this point (listed in end notes; jump there and YouTube them you want the context up front), Star Trek: TNG, _Back to School_, _Goldfinger, GoldenEye_ (but not _Man with the Golden Gun_; is that all of the gold ones?), _Rudy,_ P!nk's 'Sober', _The Waterboy_, _Serenity, Speed,_ BtVS, Zork, the Dying Earth series by Jack Vance, and the short story _The Waif Woman_ by Robert Louis Stevenson (end notes reveal what the last three of these have in common) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XIX - Man, Ocular Bat and the Unusual Hoon

* * *

.

049: Love Letters

.

YOSHIMI

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; November 2, 2007 8:36 am

.

Sarah Walker strolled into the Buy More and, as always, Chuck's attention was immediately drawn to the entrance. Her inscrutable expression as she scanned the store for him exploded in a smile without her permission when her eyes found his. She gave him a small wave that he returned while she waited for two green shirts - accompanying a customer and pushing hand trucks with a washer and dryer toward the parking lot - to pass before making her way to his desk.

She retained that same genuine smile on her face and Chuck felt fleeting guilt about how sexy he usually found her in that costume. She was wearing her dress code mandated pigtails wider than usual and, with that look on her face and her change in manner when she saw him, she was more adorable than sexy. As much a little girl as the gorgeous woman undeniably accented by the corset and short, leg-revealing skirt who was also the deadly secret agent he knew her to be.

She was an endless mystery. She was easily beautiful enough to be a model or actress yet her beauty was just the surface in more ways than the usual. She was incredibly capable and smart. And, on the rare occasion when she let her guard down, she was the sweet, funny, adorable woman he knew her to be. This was his favorite version of her. The one his heart longed to see more of and that he wished to protect from the other realities around them. Which was complete lunacy.

She was more than capable of protecting herself - physically and emotionally - and he fully understood that. It was why he appreciated her reluctance to share details of herself. The walls she had built up told him all he needed to know at this point about what lurked within. She had lived this double life far longer than he had known her - seen more than he had seen - and he didn't need to know the details to deduce the magnitude of her reluctance. So, as much as he wanted to see that hidden Sarah emerge, he trusted her with the protection she had built around that version of her that he so adored.

Besides, he had no interest in tearing her fortress down, what he really wanted was to be invited inside. Trusted, by Sarah the protector, with the inner Sarah he had seen only glimpses of. The delightful woman he had taken to the Santa Monica pier the day before - something he had promised her he wouldn't make a big deal of when it nearly became more real than the cover date it was intended to be. A promise he fully intended to keep.

"Hi Chuck," she said simply as she placed her palms flat on the counter and effortlessly raised herself slowly, keeping the entire length of her body from shoulders to toes rigid with an Olympic gymnast's combination of grace and power that never ceased to amaze him. As she levered her entire body forward to kiss him in greeting he froze, as he always did, allowing her to dictate the extent of the contact of their cover-mandated PDA.

He was expecting a stage kiss on the cheek. Instead she lightly touched her lips to his in a chaste but definitely real kiss. As her lips lightly and very briefly closed around his lower lip his only movements was his lips mimicking her action, applying precisely the same amount of pressure as they softly closed around her upper lip.

As she gracefully lowered herself back to the floor with the same deliberately slow motion - she was just showing off now - she bounced on the balls of her feet and hid her pleasure and surprise that he had reciprocated her very chaste ambush. She smiled at him and said what was on her mind trusting he would know what she was talking about. "Bold song choice. That song has a lot of backhanded compliments in it."

It was the only way he knew to knock on the gates of her fortress and tell her without telling her that she could trust him to be allowed inside. Only truth would do. Chuck was worried it could have been considered too harsh and she might take the choice the wrong way but saw that the smile on her face hadn't faded a bit. "But a lot of truth," he offered.

Sarah contemplated that for a moment before responding by repeating his own words in simple agreement "But a lot of truth."

He couldn't possibly know just how much truth but she knew he could see through some of her facade. Maybe he knew more than she thought.

"He wrote it for his wife, you know?"

Sarah didn't know that but obviously he had written it for someone close to him. "Doesn't seem terribly romantic," she commented.

"Maybe not." Was that disappointment or confusion on her face? He decided on confusion and explained further. "They didn't have a clean start and they didn't exactly end well. She was his first wife - implying 'not last' - and took advantage of being his manager too. But them specifically aside I like to think its just about different personas and the fact that no matter what everyone else thinks they see, being able to see more than that. Seeing all the facets - even things others consider faults or that caused friction between them - and accepting the whole package."

The double meaning was clear but in typical Chuck fashion it just sort of happened - this revelation of why he had chosen this song. He was just the worst liar. The truth flowed from him if he didn't consciously resist it - albeit sometimes in very deliberately oblique ways that he thought she would be better able to digest - and Sarah found she had a little bit of a lump in her throat. He wasn't wrong about her. Anything more direct she wouldn't know how to handle.

She lowered her chin to hide it giving the impression of squinting when she looked up at him through her eyelashes and her voice partly failed her and became a hoarse whisper. "Good answer."

She reached into the tiny sleeve she had sewn into the corset of her uniform that previously housed two throwing knives and extracted her new iPod. She placed it on the Nerd Herd counter and kept her hand on it just in case it was visibly unsteady.

"So...Umm...You said maybe you could put more songs on there once it was charged?" He had offered but she was still uncomfortable asking. He had put that song on there for a reason. A reason she had agonized over and he had explained well. Very, very well.

He liked her. Even if he wasn't supposed to. Even if it was foolhardy to do so for even more reasons than he already knew.

Actually, she was the one who wasn't supposed to like him. She was supposed to keep things professional. Remain detached.

He was supposed to be smart enough to not like her _knowing_ she was supposed to remain detached.

Apparently they had both gone a bit stupid.

"Anything specific?"

"Surprise me?"

Chuck just smiled and gingerly took the red iPod from her hand. He grabbed a cable from one of the drawers she couldn't see and plugged it into the computer behind the desk. He clicked around for a few seconds and looked up at her sheepishly saying "I can access my home machine from here in the store for stuff like this".

_Of course you can_, she thought. The intel on Chuck said 'good with computers' which was a woeful understatement. He handed her iPod - the one with operating software he had rewritten - back to her in less than a minute and she was reminded of a cell phone repair that had taken even less time. "That was quick - you geeks _are_ good." And she winked at him so he would know that she was perfectly aware that his preferred term was 'nerd' not 'geek'.

He smiled in recognition of her cleverness. "Well, that first one didn't necessarily address the 'after we were born' criteria of songs you may not know. Although Skip said he'd lend me his vinyl converter but that stuff's so old that it's cool again. I may have had a playlist in mind. It's kind of a hodge podge of weird alternative stuff. Things you may have just...missed."

She understood what he meant and was surprised that it didn't feel like he was fishing or judging. He didn't know when she lost touch with popular culture but wanted to help her fill in the gaps. She surprised herself by silently accepting the offer in the spirit it was given. "Thank you. I'm sure there will be something interesting on here. Lunch later?"

"Umm...sure. See you then." Chuck was more than a little surprised that there hadn't been any mention of a mission or a briefing. She had apparently just come to see him which he supposed could be just cover maintenance but still confused him immensely. And apparently they were meeting for lunch.

Sarah paused to give him a little finger-wiggling wave as she reached the door and looked back to see him watching her leave. She tried not to let on how giddy she was to see what he had put on her iPod. When she got back to the Weinerlicious to report for her shift her manager, Scooter, was there. It irritated her beyond words that she had to spend over an hour and a half restocking condiments and serving their disgusting breakfast fare before her first break of the day.

At 10:30 she declared it was her break time. She preferred not to waste her cover time with Chuck with the distraction of food so she he whipped up an approximation of a small poutine from a half order of fries, some watery gravy they strangely kept on hand as a condiment and actual squeaky cheese she had slipped into last week's order for precisely this purpose. She would have to run an extra mile tonight but it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. She grabbed her guilty pleasure concoction along with a small diet soda and went outside to sit at the outdoor tables.

After she took a few bites of her snack she withdrew her iPod clutching it in both hands, took a deep breath and looked at what Chuck had selected for her. He had loaded a playlist titled with today's date on his 'ghost menu' - the one he had somehow added to the device - and left a specific song queued up.

Her face fell when she saw the bizarre title of the song from an equally oddly-named band she'd never heard of. She hadn't expected something overtly romantic but this just looked...weird. She blew out the breath she didn't realize she was holding and thought maybe she had misread his intentions and put too much meaning behind his gift.

She took another few bites of the gloppy dish she had thrown together and decided to listen anyway. After the first line about a girl with a black belt in karate, a smile overtook her face and by the chorus she burst out laughing. It wasn't romantic. Not in the slightest. Or it wouldn't have been to anyone else in the world. She glanced over toward the Buy More knowing Chuck wouldn't be headed toward her for another couple of hours but wishing he had been there to see the reaction he had obviously been hoping for.

It was sweet that he gave her a song that was obviously about her protecting him. And she appreciated the fact that he didn't have a noticeable problem with her playing the role of protector in their bizarre relationship. Maybe she was over analyzing again but as she listened to the song a second time - particularly to lines like _I know she can beat them_ and _you won't let those robots eat me_ \- it meant more to her that he had that kind of faith in her than any predictable and sappy love song he could have chosen.

Sarah finished her snack and sat back in her chair with a silly grin on her face. She sipped the rest of her soda while she listened once more - comparing the evil robots mentioned in the song to the ongoing threat of any shadowy organization out to find and capture this delightful man she had been ordered to protect - before returning to work. It would only be a couple of hours before Chuck could get away for lunch. Unlike their pseudo-date she had enough time to mentally discipline her body in a fashion very different than what the song implied.

Something that was getting increasingly difficult to do.

.

* * *

.

TO MAKE YOU FREE

.

Buy More again, two days later, 3:45 pm

.

_Oh no_... she thought as she approached the Nerd Herd desk ..._Pensive-Chuck_.

It wasn't that she disliked Pensive-Chuck. Quite the contrary. He was terribly cute when he was thinking. Doubly so when he seemed troubled by those thoughts as he did now. But when he was all thoughtful and gloomy like this it made it harder for her to resist doing something to improve his mood. Given free rein she was certain she could drastically improve his mood - do things to him that would certainly distract him from whatever hurt he was feeling - but that wasn't the hand they had been dealt. So it just made her sad to see him like this.

He had enough to worry about and it pained her when some additional burden put him one of these funks. This time she had a good idea what was troubling him.

.

* * *

.

_EARLIER_...

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence; Echo Park, CA

.

They had been at Casey's apartment for the better part of two hours. Chuck had an early shift, Devon and Ellie were still on an overnight shift, which meant they were able to meet for an even earlier shift of intel review across the courtyard. John Casey and Sarah Walker had been poised, watching intently, as Chuck Bartowski reviewed a thick packet of intelligence reports and surveillance photographs. The two agents had adopted their usual poses of Casey standing by with a with a notepad and pen at the ready and Sarah poised over her laptop with several agency databases open and ready.

The first few times they had conducted these reviews both agents had taken their own notes and both followed up afterward to make sense of their scribbles. They eventually agreed to take turns combining notes and producing a single, combined report. This current division of labor had recently evolved due to the rapid fire nature of Chuck's flashes and to reduce the occasional need for follow ups. Casey had ceded the additional research portion of the routine to Sarah claiming she had access to better sources. This was true but he also didn't want to admit that she was simply faster.

Today had been a new experience. After the first fifteen minutes Chuck had not flashed on anything. His few flashes after that had been old intel previously reported. After another half hour, Casey's impatience was starting to show as he alternated between clicking his ball-point pen and tapping it on his notepad.

Sarah had been reestablishing her database connections when they had timed out but now three windows were open with log in screens awaiting the usually inevitable flow of information from the unique young man whose mind housed most of, if not all, of the nation's secrets.

At the one hour mark, Casey had thrown the pad and pen unceremoniously onto the table and retrieved his pistol. This caught both Sarah and Chuck's attention but she realized that Casey was also opening a gun cleaning kit. Chuck's eyes remained on the gun and Casey noticed.

"Intersect dry up or something, Bartowski?"

Stirred from an hour of fruitless concentration and mesmerized by the gun, Chuck hesitated to answer. "I...No. No. It's just...it's just not coming as easily as it usually does."

Chuck relaxed as Casey broke down his Sig Sauer and and laid out its component pieces. Chuck still stared at it in his usual way of looking at any puzzle and Sarah could see the moment when he visualized how the pieces formed a working machine designed to expel projectiles with lethal force. It wasn't a flash, it was Chuck working things out. Just one of the many amazing things about him.

Having solved the puzzle he found his voice again. "I'm not seeing...usually I can't stop the images from coming. But I'm not seeing any new connections-"

"Are we wasting our time with you? Intersect run its course? Nothing new to report? 'Cause pulling new rabbits out of your hat is the only reason you're allowed to roam free. More conducive environment-"

"Casey!" Sarah barked at him as had just begun to mockingly recite part of her initial report. The one that she had filed in direct contradiction to his own. The one that kept Chuck out of secure custody that would have subjected him to this same routine daily just without the apparent but artificial 'freedom' of maintaining some semblance of his prior life.

"What?" Casey snapped back at her. "I know I could find better things to do. And I know Graham wants his best agent back in the field."

Sarah had set her laptop down and walked toward Chuck who she knew could fight his own fights with Casey but was still in that hazy twilight state that often lingered when he had been digesting massive amounts of intel. By that reaction alone she knew he hadn't been slacking in the slightest.

"I know you're trying, Chuck. Just relax," she said softly as she lightly rubbed one palm across the back of his left shoulder. Soothingly she hoped, but when he looked up she realized he was back to working out another puzzle. Her.

She wondered what he was thinking as she retraced the comments just made and the tumblers in Chuck's eyes clicked into place as her memory accessed the likely offender.

_Best agent_. She startled just the tiniest bit when she settled on it, stopping the motion of her hand before withdrawing it completely. In fact, despite the unlikeliness of Chuck knowing what she was thinking at that precise moment, maybe Chuck's realization had been triggered by her reaction.

Of course Chuck didn't think of her that way. Or maybe he had considered it but the full impact didn't register until Casey, no more inclined to hyperbole than she was, confirmed it: she _is_ the CIA's best.

Casey had continued his grumbling as he continued his attempt to distract himself with a few additional weapons. He slipped in the term _best agent_ more than once in reference to her as well as something about her being "the only one I'll tolerate". Despite his manner, Sarah was proud of Casey's opinion of her. It was important to her that Casey considered her an equal both because it was simply a high bar to be compared to Casey and because many other less proficient male agents in the past had failed to recognize her as a superior agent.

But then she realized that what Chuck was puzzling out were the ramifications. She was the best agent the CIA had. She belonged in the field. She was only here because it was too risky to expose Chuck - to expose the Intersect - to a new agent. She was wasted here. She was trapped here.

She doesn't belong here.

Or at least those were the leaps her own mind made and she looked away, breaking eye contact with Chuck as Casey offered another useless piece of advice.

"Maybe read 'em slower."

"I'll read them until there's nothing else I can get from them!" Chuck snapped. Sarah whipped her head back toward him. "If slower is faster I'll go slower but right now slower would just be fucking slower!"

Chuck just resumed his scrutiny of the intel packet as Casey grinned. Had he been trying to agitate Chuck into flashing? Trying anything to jump start the process?

From there Chuck had a couple of flashes but mostly flipped pages faster and more aggressively than he normally would. Sarah considered his demeanor for a few moments and tore a few pages from near the back of a time-killer book she had in her purse. She grabbed Casey's pen from where he had left it and approached Chuck.

He stopped what he was doing when she reached him and he looked up at her. "I'm trying, Sarah."

"I know. I believe you. But you need to relax. Try this."

He glanced at her still-open purse and at the pages and smiled at her.

"Sudoku?"

Of course she could think of better, less appropriate ways to get him to relax but mentally assembling a gun or mentally dissecting her - puzzles, and solving them; his mind thrived on it.

"Just try it."

He looked at her slightly differently than before. _Yes, Chuck. I like logic puzzles._ She was slightly irritated at having to reveal another tiny detail about herself on anything but her own terms but Chuck looked at that detail as another part of _her_ puzzle. The one that was constantly shifting in his mind, it's resultant picture ever changing. She was fascinating.

He accepted the pages from her hands, glanced at the difficulty rating at the top and smiled. "These are the hard ones. You know some of these can't be solved, right? I might shut down like the Borg."

"Whatever the Borg is. I know you can beat them."

It was a thinly veiled comment. One that even Casey had missed. A reference to that ridiculous song about pink robots. And despite her trodding all over Starfleet mythology Chuck recognized it for what it was. Maybe one day he would figure out the most intriguing puzzle he had ever encountered.

Sarah had been right. Puzzles were Chuck's palette cleanser. Casey had been about to protest until he too became engrossed in watching Chuck solve the puzzles. Six to a page he scanned them scribbling a number between one and nine in the blank spaces or notes on possibilities just outside the border, moving between the six puzzles with no discernible pattern. Apparently the solving itself wasn't good enough. He had to do it for speed.

It took less than ten minutes to solve the front of the first page with only the third puzzle tripping him up momentarily as it had two possible solutions and required some notes in the margins. It usually took her up to twenty minutes to solve those 'unsolvable' ones.

After he completed that side of the first page and took a deep breath he dove back into the intel packet. She knew how much he hated to miss anything whether it was outdated or had the potential to save lives. He was like her. He hated to lose.

But she knew he could solve any puzzle and when he first flashed after taking her advice he looked up and smiled at her. After reporting what he had seen, while Casey was jotting down notes, before she went into heads-down mode to research the details, he mouthed a silent 'thank you'. She just smiled back at him but his expression suddenly turned inexplicably more pensive for reasons only he knew.

He could solve anything...given enough time.

.

* * *

.

_LATER_, at the Buy More

.

It was the same pensive look he now wore hours later as she expectantly handed over her iPod for another update.

"Doing OK?" she asked.

"Yeah. Just..." he made the decision he had previously discarded and added something at the last minute this time.

As Chuck was about to hand her iPod back to her he was holding it between his first two fingers and he snatched it back just as she reached for it by simply curling his fingers. She had been looking forward to his next selections for her and was smiling broadly in anticipation of it. When he yanked it back it was hard for her not to react as though she had been struck.

"I know it can't be what you signed up for...babysitting me like this. Casey either. I'm sorry I had trouble coming up with anything this morning."

She immediately warmed at that. "Don't, Chuck. I know you're doing all you can. So does Casey-"

"But he's right. The well might just run dry one day. Then I won't warrant the 24-7 treatment."

_Be careful what you wish for_, he thought as he considered that no Intersect meant no Sarah. He excused himself to go work on some repairs and warning her about the music selections he had chosen "There might be some moody stuff in there this time," as she watched him head toward the work bench in the cage pausing briefly to glance back at her.

.

* * *

.

Buy More Parking Lot; Burbank, CA

.

Sarah had intended to listen to whatever song he had queued up for her in the comfort of her hotel room but the sad smile he had given her before he disappeared into the back of the store compelled her to listen as soon as possible. She was a little leery of the song choice given Chuck's mood when she plugged into the auxiliary jack of her car stereo and wasn't surprised to hear an ethereal, almost-childlike female voice against a haunting, repetitive guitar part that actually sounded a bit like a music box. Coupled with a simple, plodding drum beat it was equal parts beautiful and sad.

She was already inclined to dislike the song because she knew how sharp Chuck's insight was and how cutting it could be when he was upset. The first time through she had the combative thought that it should really be named Stars and Boats since there wasn't any mention of a bird but was willing to admit the more alliterative choice was more compelling despite its inaccuracy.

When she gave it a second chance - and a third and fourth - she realized that it was related to this morning's conversation and, although not deliberately hurtful, the insights it contained may have been a little too pointed for comfort. Yet she couldn't stop listening.

Excluding repeated lines it was really only two verses paired with two unique choruses about two very simple things: a star in the sky and a boat on the sea.

The sky and the sea. Two massive, permanent, dependable constants - powerful elementals that served only as the backdrop for the smaller points of interest. A star and a boat - both just passing through.

The sky sees its only purpose as darkening so that the star can shine more brightly. The star should have some permanence too but the sky encourages it to leave for another sky where it can shine even more brightly. The only keepsake of their time together is a bit of stardust.

The sea is just the means for the boat to sail far away. To someplace better. The evidence of it ever having been there has even less permanence than the star. Just the wake of the boat. Dissipating ripples left behind from its passing.

Its frustrating. None of the spacial relationships make any sense. How can a star in the sky move to another sky? Why can't the sea itself see the boat when it reaches some far away shore while sailing on that sea? But the message of both is the same - in neither case is the current location good enough.

The star can be more elsewhere and the sky itself wants that for it.

_I live to let you shine._

The boat can find happiness elsewhere and the sea itself wants that for it.

_I live to make you free._

None of it makes any sense but she somehow understands. As much as she has lobbied for his pseudo-freedom, _he_ is the one who is trapped. She could kick Casey for putting the idea in Chuck's head that he is somehow holding her back from something better. She wants to shake Chuck for seeming to think he's somehow not good enough for someone he cares about to be happy with him.

But its also inescapably true. She wishes she could find a way to not eventually skyrocket away - to not sail off past the horizon - leaving nothing lasting, nothing of herself to remember her by.

But she knows she'll have to eventually.

And so does he.

And he's telling her that's OK.

At some point during the seventh listen she decides she hates this song when she feels a hot trickle down her cheek that she wipes away.

As she drives away from the Buy More that Chuck has been trapped in for years, and will remain trapped in for the foreseeable future, the irony is not lost on her.

.

* * *

.

SPY MIX

.

Buy More again, another day, 3:45 pm

.

It was busy in the store today and he hesitated before handing it to her just as another irate customer interrupted. When he turned to assist the man he laid the iPod down between them and Sarah snatched it up quickly. He had loaded it with hundreds of songs by hundreds of artists, all catalogued in interesting ways making everything easy to find. But it was the secret messages contained in the specific song he left queued up that she was so anxious to see. Whatever had caused him to hesitate she wanted to find out.

When Chuck sheepishly turned back to her and began to apologize for someone else's action of interrupting their conversation he stopped short when he saw the iPod was no longer where he left it.

"Umm...could I just see that again? I...uh...think I may have left something out..."

"Nope. Basic chess etiquette," she teased as she waved the device between them. "You took your hand off the piece so your move is over."

Chuck looked slightly confused, a small triumph for her in their repartee. "But... we're not playing chess..."

"Hmm..." she hummed as she smiled and turned to leave him to another customer with an ever so slight victorious sway to her hips.

_Aren't we?_

Check.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious Patio; Burbank, CA

.

Sarah was alone at the Weinerlicious this morning and there were next to no patrons during the mid-morning hours. She took the opportunity to take a break whenever she felt like it, poured herself a drink and sat outside to see what Chuck had queued up for her this time that had made him so nervous. And she fought her own nerves as she slowly unraveled the present.

_...Don't think..._

_...Just listen..._

_...Don't fixate on the lyrics at first..._

_...Just let it pour over you..._

It opens with a slightly cheesy piano riff but she loves the tone of it and the horn section at the end. It was the second time through when she allowed herself to process the lyrics when she realized what Chuck must have thought was his mistake.

He had been extremely careful not to include songs with even a mention if the word 'love'. Until now.

It was in the first one but not overtly. You wouldn't know it unless you were listening very closely. He hadn't chosen overtly romantic songs to highlight for her by simply leaving them queued up but even she knew that such proclamations were rampant in popular music. The word was thrown around far too freely. Who could actually love someone they had just met and really barely knew? Even so she wondered if he was avoiding the word because he didn't want to use it or because he didn't want to reveal too much too soon.

She had asked for the stakeout mix despite it containing many older songs but was surprised that the song he left queued up for her was from that selection. He had hesitated over leaving this particular song as his secret message for this time and she wondered if he would have changed his selection had he not been distracted.

She initially thought it was just another 'I think you're pretty nifty' song - or maybe another appreciation of her prowess as a spy - when she saw the title. After all, the source information indicated it was from a James Bond movie and that was what the past ten years of her life had been about. Being the best spy in the world. Nobody knew her true identity and nobody could beat her in a fair fight. Especially because there was no such thing as a fair fight and no body could stack the odds in their favor like she could. 'Nobody does it better' was a very apt description of her as a spy.

But as she listened more closely it really was a little too bold. The second chorus touched on the secret electricity beneath their shows of affection for the sake of their cover. He would never know how much she hated those physical lies with either a mark or a knowing partner as part of a cover. She made it look good because she had been trained to do so but it made her skin crawl.

Even outside of missions that fear of betrayal had kept real intimacy out of her personal life. She never let anyone hold her or even share a bed if she could help it after the adrenaline and sexual excitement had subsided. It made her feel absolutely suffocated.

But from the beginning his touch had been different. Different than anything she had ever experienced. And whatever undeniable chemistry made it so difficult for both of them to restrain themselves when selling their cover he never abused the situation for his own gratification. If anything he was sweet and soothing and tried to convey something that WAS magical to her. That did keep her from running away from his touch.

She was safe with him.

But not in a completely devoid of sexual attraction way. The lit fuse underneath their undercover excuses was actually quite dangerous. But rather in a way that told her that, as interested as he was in seeing beyond the walls she had built around her innermost self, and a few relatively harmless probing questions aside, he wasn't trying to crash through those walls. He was letting her work things out. Determine whether she could trust him to be let inside that fortress.

If there weren't so many real dangers in play - and so many skeletons in her closet - she would have already let him in.

He would never hurt her.

That's why she knew that he had strongly considered leaving this song as a message to her but thought better of it. Knew it would be pushing too far. But she got cute and didn't let him take it back. Wouldn't allow him to prevent himself from holding back what he really wanted to say. She just had to know. Know what he hoped was somehow true. Or, maybe had a chance of one day being true because it was a pretty important word he had been avoiding.

A word that, once uttered, came with power to hurt you. Power that, despite her trust of _his_ intentions, too many outside forces could use against her. And against him.

Even though he wouldn't hurt her, he wouldn't normally push the issue either. And she was mostly concerned about hurting _him_ just by being herself and all the baggage that carried with it - despite his offer to help carry the load - to be her baggage handler. And she smiled at that memory.

The big dork.

No. Given how little he truly knew about her and how little she was willing to reveal, it was absurd to think either of them felt quite that strongly on top of the very real danger in their lives and the odd circumstances of their relationship and the complications that would arise should they consider acting on their feelings.

It was an oddly structured song with no true repeated chorus so maybe he had been thinking all these things himself and lost sight of that word even as prominently placed as it was. Because it wasn't the references to how warm and secure she felt when he held her close for one of their movie nights or even the mildly sexual connotations of the lyrics that gave her pause.

She was glad they weren't playing chess. Not if she wanted to win. And she wasn't sure she did anymore.

Because, even though there was no way it was remotely true, there was that one line in particular. The one that this version of her had started to admit the very remote possibility of one day being true.

..._The spy who loved me_...

Well, fuck.

Checkmate.

.

* * *

.

050: Big Man on Campus

.

Stanford University Campus, Palo Alto, CA; Football Saturday

.

Ellie had thanked Sarah for joining them roughly once every half hour. It ensured that none of Devon's buddies would ride with them. It seemed Ellie feared the entire trip would be spent watching Devon goof around with his frat brothers and former football teammates from UCLA. Devon had been an undersized walk-on backup tight end who never played a meaningful snap but was known for his practice work ethic.

Many of Devon's former teammates called him Rudy in reference to, as Ellie had explained with no shortage of pride, some other marginal player who apparently had a habit of making star players look bad in practice with his unrelenting effort. He deflected her praise good-naturedly by saying he had to work that hard because not everyone could be as naturally brilliant as his awesome girlfriend but it was one of the things Ellie found most attractive about her obviously physically attractive and charming boyfriend. Sure, he talked like a surfer, enjoyed extreme sports and violated Ellie's own rule about dating ridiculously attractive men (a rule she created to protect herself after the first break in their relationship) but his dedication to his studies and his career were undeniable.

Sarah was glad that she was able to do this favor for Ellie as well. A couple of those teammates had been leering uncomfortably at Ellie and had extended their leering to Sarah as the formed up their convoy. Ellie had deliberately ignored them but Sarah was glad neither she nor Ellie would be trapped in a car with them. Sarah didn't know if it was shallow jealousy - that they just saw Ellie and Sarah as the proverbial 'hot girls' - but Sarah herself felt slight pangs of jealousy at Devon and Ellie's very, very real relationship when Devon just let Ellie talk and occasionally kissed her hand as he drove even as he blushed at her compliments and returned them in spades.

They had to leave before sunrise to make the over five hour drive to participate in the campus events before game time which suited Sarah just fine. It allowed Ellie to tell all sorts of stories about Chuck and allowed Sarah to maintain a reassuring physical contact with Chuck. Both were possible because Chuck dozed off less than an hour into the trip.

Sarah's heart had finally removed itself from her throat and returned to normal functioning after yesterday when she had heard Chuck call out a vague 'Man down!' and rounded the corner to see a body on the ground with the Icelandic assassin's trademark crossbow bolt protruding from its back.

An unfamiliar feeling of cold terror had overtaken her until she realized the body was a still-clinging-to-life Professor Fleming and that Chuck was lying beneath him having attempted to cradle the injured man's fall.

Devon at least feigned concentrating on driving as Ellie regaled her with stories of a young Chuck. Sarah hadn't known that Chuck played basketball and ran cross-country track until he was old enough to get a job. That he was Bryce's training partner in college but never tried out for the track team even though he was somewhat of an honorary member. With his own academic scholarship - and knowing the financial strain of attempting to attend Stanford without it - he hadn't wanted to potentially take a spot from a scholarship athlete. And apparently, according to Ellie, he could have.

Watching the range of emotions on Ellie's face told half the story. Her disappointment in herself that she couldn't support them both sufficiently for Chuck to remain on the track team instead of working. Her defiant pride in the fact that, while Bryce may have received the accolades, Chuck was his equal in a particular athletic endeavor. And the quiet satisfaction of having raised a good man when she explained his reasoning for never attempting to officially join the team.

Sarah watched the rising sun illuminate Chuck's sleeping face, so peaceful in repose. She shifted closer to him and placed her hand on his chest over his beating heart feeling the reassuring warmth of him. Alive and unpunctured by archaic weapons and still possessing that inability to do or really even wish harm to anyone.

He really was a remarkable man.

.

* * *

.

After they had parted from Ellie, Sarah had objected to Chuck inviting her on what he called the "Chuck Bartowski Memorial Tour" saying memorials were for the dead. Chuck remained unaware of her hidden fears for his safety as he deflected by saying it was his academic career that died the brutal death.

She wondered not for the first time just how many people were resilient enough to not completely crumble under the expectations they were currently placing on him having already seen his dreams go up in smoke long ago.

Casey soon located them, the other Agent dressed like Johnny Cash. Or Steven Segal. Generally looking terribly out of place among the students. Despite Casey's grumblings Sarah was starting to wonder whether the two were starting to develop a big-brother / little-brother dynamic when they exchanged snarky comments before Chuck set off to lead them to the library.

"The library's this way, across the quad," Chuck said before stopping in his tracks.

Sarah didn't even try to hide her concern at seeing the expression on his face. "What is it?" she asked as Casey kept his distance but listened in.

"I don't know. I mean, I figured this would be tough, but this place is just a lot to take in, you know? I used to have so much fun here, and then..."

"And then?" she prompted him to continue.

"It was the worst day of my life," he spat with a grim chuckle. She thought it interesting that his expulsion trumped any of his recent misadventures as he continued. "Getting kicked out of here. Having to hear Ellie's voice when I told her I was coming home. Packing up all my stuff. And leaving as Bryce just stood there. He said I brought it on myself."

"Why do you think that Bryce betrayed you?" She was as puzzled by it as Chuck was but she hadn't had over four years to consider it. Chuck's response revealed that even time had not uncovered the answer.

"I don't know. He's had four years to call and set the record straight. Now that he's gone...You know what? Forget it. Bryce has betrayed a lot of people, hasn't he?"

"Roger that," said Casey as they resumed their walk toward the library. As Casey scanned the area he noticed the university seal on a nearby building and the accompanying motto. Casey's German was spotty but he recognized some words as he commented frustratedly "Fucking German. Something about wind and freedom?"

Sarah could read the phrase that Casey could not and she teased him about it as they walked. "You don't speak German, Casey? Figured East Berlin would love you."

"How old do you think I am Walker? Don't answer that. The wall came down when I was still with the Corps." But just barely, he thought. A younger, more foolish him inspired by those events and the possibility of helping to make such changes in the world himself just a few days before an early Christmas phone call that changed his life forever. "Anyway, what's it mean?"

Before Sarah could answer, Chuck turned back to face them, then the seal and recited it. "Die Luft der Freiheit weht." then with a chuckle he offered the translation. "It means: the wind of freedom blows."

"Well, that's more like it," Casey said approvingly. "The wind of freedom blows. Hmm," he grunted further emphasizing his approval as they reached the library.

"Sometimes it definitely blows," Chuck muttered remembering his discussion with Sarah about the double-edged sword that wishes could be and causing Sarah to smile at the same thought as the three walked toward the entrance.

Chuck noticed Casey's change in posture as they approached the doors and when he looked to Sarah thinking it was a bit of overkill he saw she had done the same. When Casey next spoke it was to give instructions which Chuck assumed were for his benefit. "All right, we have to play this really cool. Magnus has the library book number. He could have beaten us here."

Chuck hadn't considered that possibility until just now. "You think he's in there?"

"Look, maybe you should stay here," Sarah offered, sure that the suggestion of an assassin laying in wait had freaked Chuck out.

Instead Chuck dismissed her concerns and strode boldly toward the door. "Yeah, 'cause that always works out well. Anyway, you can't find the book without me. I'm going in."

She caught Casey's eye and he looked just as surprised and impressed at their protectee's decisiveness. Maybe facing the demons of this place was just what Chuck needed to overcome the events that had crushed his spirit because this was an interesting glimpse of the way Ellie described him - and who Morgan often implied he was - the brash young man who came to Stanford intent upon changing the world. Sarah must have been slightly more impressed since Casey smirked at her and teased "You're catching flies, Walker."

She closed her slightly agape mouth and frowned at Casey before they both followed Chuck into the library only to find his brief bout of boldness stymied by a card access entry system. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no," he muttered as he involuntarily patted down his pockets for an access card he did not have.

"You looking for this?" Casey grinned.

"You stole my ID?" Chuck said at the student identification card Casey was holding.

"I borrowed it to reactivate it," the NSA agent informed him as he examined his own handiwork. "Sorry I couldn't wipe the idiot grin off your face with photoshop."

As each of them passed through the readers Chuck realized both of his handlers had used cards of their own and was still trying to one-up Casey. "You guys have them too. How good could _your_ pictures be?"

Sarah held hers up so Chuck could see and her picture was effortlessly gorgeous with her head tilted slightly down and to one side and those piercing eyes fixed on the camera.

"Oh. Right." He should have known hers would look like a modeling shoot and he wasn't going to make the same mistake with Casey since he had probably chosen a flattering angle for himself too. Instead he had a sudden inspiration.

"Makes you wonder why the people on the yearbook committee didn't have the best pictures. Anyway its up those stairs," he gestured vaguely to the main staircase "and here we are like some kind of twisted Breakfast Club. Maybe a bunch of freshmen meeting for a study group. Maybe trying out cheesy pickup lines on unsuspecting coeds."

He turned his attention to Sarah, leering at her in a comical fashion. "Hey, good lookin'. _Dewey_ you come here often?" he drawled as his eyebrows danced.

"Library humor, Chuck? Really?" she asked.

But he excitedly persisted "Oh, wait! Wait! This ones a classic." _ahem_, he coughed before raising an eyebrow, offering a crooked half-grin, straightening a non-existent tie and lowering his voice. "Can you tutor me in English? Help me straighten out my Longfellow?"

He thought the Dangerfield approach might have been too crass but her eye roll lost some of its impact when she had to turn her head to suppress her laugh and grin.

"No?" he smiled as she just shook her head.

"Thought I said leave the quips to me. Cut it out Bartowski," Casey barked with just the amount of irritation Chuck had been hoping to achieve.

"Wait, wait, one more, one more. So..." Chuck rambled excitedly before calming himself, clearing his throat and diverting the same smarmy air toward Casey to deliver his punchline. "...What's your major, Major?"

Sarah actually snorted at that one but Casey seemed to have had enough, muttering "Jesus Christ" as he moved toward the main stairs.

"You don't know where you're going," Chuck called after him gleefully.

"Neither do you, dumbass but you said third floor. That isn't hard to find. You know, before I couldn't believe you only had one girlfriend in college. It's a miracle you HAD one girlfriend in college," he trailed off as he walked away.

"I like to wait for something special," Chuck fired one last shot in Casey's direction but found the most wonderful double meaning when Sarah drew his attention to the fact that she was still by his side.

"Having fun?" she asked with a small smile.

"Sorry. Just...coping mechanism?" he offered sheepishly as he realized he had gotten carried away in an attempt to distract himself from impending danger.

"If you say so, Longfellow," she teased as she walked toward the stairs. "Just don't say anything about cummings if you know what's good for you."

Chuck could have sworn he saw her wink at him as she looked back over her shoulder and he scrambled to catch up.

.

* * *

.

051: Suicide Blonde

.

* * *

_"For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior's only concern._

_Suppress all human emotion and compassion._

_Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself._

_This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat."_

\- Hattori Hanzo, _Kill Bill: Volume 1_

* * *

.

Stanford University, Engineering Building, Auditorium; Palo Alto, CA

.

Two hundred ninety four dollars and sixty eight cents.

It seemed an odd thing to be thinking about as she and Casey took cover behind the desk at the front of the lecture hall having been caught by surprise by Magnus Einerson's men. Both agents were returning fire, outmanned and outgunned, against a small squad pinning them down from a superior, elevated position. Their crossbow wielding leader was nowhere to be seen.

Almost $300 in late fees? For one book? Her own misplaced and borrowed public library books over the years must have rung up fees in the tens of thousands. Or maybe everything was just pricier at Stanford.

It was supposed to be your life flashing before your eyes. But she had been in so many close scrapes that she knew it was just a few moments of your life and it always seemed to be the strangest things that leapt to the forefront of your mind.

They had been caught unawares, Casey surprising her by telling Chuck to click the entry bearing his name even as she told Chuck not to, Chuck expressing surprise since he had never applied with the CIA.

As though they always asked.

All three had been distracted and, although Chuck had escaped with the disk, now their current defensive position was terrible. And, in order to fit in around campus, both she and Casey were only lightly armed. Her first instinct had been to tell Chuck to run with the disk. Even then smiling to herself while thinking of the man who thought he wasn't brave and his battlefield humor, teasing her that this would have been a good time to have stayed in the car.

She was glad she had told him to run. This was her in her element. Her actions under fire were automatic. And it was wild and exhilarating instead of frightening. She noticed that Casey was completely calm, the affect of his extensive training. She was no less effective or outwardly appearing to be anything other than calm but inside she was manic. The result of _her_ training.

She was reminded of watching one of the Bond movies that Chuck said was one of the best ones. Ellie said he only thought that because of the game. Something with 'gold' in the name but not the one with the goofy song; she had seen that one on TV at some point in her youth and knew everyone considered that the best one. She had sung "Gold...FINGER!" loudly and dramatically while waving a definitively not-gold finger in his face to Ellie's delight. No, this was a different one with a different Bond. But it was the woman she remembered from this more recent movie.

The one with the stupid, sexual innuendo for a name (like most of them) who found orgasmic bliss in killing. An actual lust for murder. Sarah had rolled her eyes and left the couch. She and Ellie spent the remainder of the movie drinking wine and talking at the dining table, occasionally mocking the movie and pointing out things like "you know a guy really cares when he steals a tank to save you".

It wasn't that she herself had ever in any way got off on killing although her disgust at that element of the movie had not been feigned. What she did find unsettling was that she did recognize that manic, berserker element in herself.

At first it had seemed tied to the specific words. The go command for her attacks after a short countdown - 'Zero: Execute'.

It had always puzzled her why the countdown always explicitly went to zero but she knew better than to ask such questions at that stage. And by the time she had earned enough credibility to directly address her superiors, the answers to most of her questions seemed less important. She was a finely tuned killing machine then and, more importantly, at some point she had apparently learned how to wind herself up.

She guessed that, however it evidenced itself, all the trainings conditioned you to do these things in different ways. For her it was a darkness rising up within her, beckoning her to become what she must in order to do the horrible things she has had to do to survive.

This was the first real gunfight since she had returned to the US and she felt the pull of that familiar state of mind that made her so incredibly dangerous and made any fear disappear completely. The darkness that whispered for her to come and play. Suppressing everything human about her like lights in the windows of a house extinguishing themselves one by one until it was engulfed by the darkness. But for the first time in recent memory the thought also made her feel a little sick to her stomach.

Thank god for Casey. When he carried light he still carried heavy, choosing over-pressure rounds and a gun that could handle them for going after a man who preferred a short range weapon. She was pretty sure he had taken out two men through the second row of desks. The rest were concealed behind higher rows and he had no angle. She had killed at least one who had made the mistake of popping his head up with inadequate cover fire and wounded another with a shot that chipped off part of the desk in front of his face.

She had been counting and - unless she was wrong - they were officially in deep shit. There were at least five more men behind the cover of the lecture hall desks. She pulled her mag and, even in her distracted state, she hadn't missed her count. She watched as Casey mimicked her actions and said "I only got two rounds left."

She didn't want him to think she was just trying to one up him as Chuck had been much more humorously when teasing him earlier so she lied to him. "I got half a mag."

She hoped Chuck had gotten clear. Evaded Einerson. Ran as far and as fast as Ellie said he was capable of. Chuck was an amazing puzzle solver but she doubted that would have been of much use in a gunfight. Even so, she wished she had some way to communicate with him at this moment. This may or may not be her last stand but she found she wished she had said goodbye. Just a useless word but this was looking like she was going to have to try something drastic soon and turn off that final light.

Just then one of Einerson's men made it clear that now was the time when he shouted "Drop your weapons and stand up! Hands where we can see them!"

It would definitely be goodbye for 'Sarah'. When Chuck came back - if he came back - he was likely to find the demon she had been hiding from him for weeks. Whether in victory or death, covered in blood, either her own or that of her enemies. She never wanted him to see her do what she was about to do. It would be the end of of her masquerade as 'Sarah'.

She untucked her shirt and checked her knives in the holster that ran up her spine as she slid the retracting portion down and clipped it to the waist of her pants. She would sprint up the left side, take her shot at the nearest man, throw her gun to buy what time she could, maybe collect the weapon from the fallen man on that side if she could and then...then it gets messy. Wet work. Trench warfare inside a lecture hall. Arteries, brachial nerves and critical organs. Shock and awe before they find the sense to fire down at her.

"I'm gonna go for it." She nodded at the left side of the room where she would vault the first two rows before reaching her first known foe and at the thought of what was about to transpire she smiled wickedly. Whether Casey held his own as a complementary attacker in her assault or a distraction that improved her odds remained to be seen but she thought it was a good bet that he could hold his own and even try to match her. "You in?"

"You bet. I hate long good-byes."

There it was.

Even with his reputation and mission performance thus far it was the first time she had seen herself reflected in his eyes. The demon in _him_. They were cut from the same cloth and didn't need sentiments like goodbyes. At least between creatures of her own kind. She shook off the nagging regret of not having said more to Chuck than just to run. But if Casey didn't like Chuck getting the better of him with his wit, he was going to hate this.

Get ready for the show Major.

"Actually, why don't you drop _your_ weapons," came a voice from the main door of the room behind the top row of seating as a half-dozen college kids burst in and deployed quickly carrying assault rifles.

She felt the demon inside recede reluctantly, robbed of its chance to guide her hand as she did what she did best, as Casey noted with relief "Looks like someone called the cavalry."

"Good," she smiled at him. Now was the time for the only one upmanship left to her and she smiled at his huff of breath when she revealed how dire their circumstances had been. "'Cause I only had one shot left."

.

* * *

.

052: Sarah's Garden

.

Nowhere; Outside of Time

.

Here she was again. She sighed and looked down at her simple white dress. She was surrounded by an endless field of white asphodel up to her mid thigh just high enough to tickle her finger tips as she walked through it. It was beautiful. And it was as desolate as a field of flowers could be – unbroken by any other variation in the landscape or horizon. Just green and white in all directions. She knew it didn't matter which direction she walked or even if she stood stock still, the garden would always appear. And she would be drawn to it whether she walked toward it and passed through its gate or it came to her and engulfed her as the gate passed around her. It was inescapable.

A grey-stone wall encircled her and the visages of released souls were reflected in the petals of the many flowers that carpeted the garden. She knew their number. And their faces. And most of their names. The scores of orange lilies, red poppies and uncertain white daisies that surrounded her called out to her by name. A confused cacophony as very few knew her by the same name. She was saddened to see that there were at least fifty daisies this time.

She slid her feet step by careful step toward the clear area farthest from the gate...Only the clearing was no longer empty.

A huge oak tree sprouted at the far end of the clearing. One with a thick, gnarled trunk and a thick, expansive canopy of branches and leaves. She had never been able to reach its shelter before but there it stood - its trunk half-inside, half-outside the wall of her garden - inseparably merged making it impossible to tell whether the tree grew around the wall or the wall passed through the tree.

All the flowers possessed tentacle-like vines that wove beneath the grass concealing themselves. The vines were licking at her ankles and rain was starting to fall. This time it was accompanied by the sound of thunder from more than one source. The deeper, rumbling thunder was distant but the closer sound seemed to originate from within her. She felt it shake her bones and felt the rain splash against her skin. The few drops of rain were warm against her skin and she looked down to see that the rain was again thick and red.

As she continued her slow advance she looked up to the sky only to see that she was shielded by the thick green canopy of the massive tree. The leaves deflected the red rain cascading away and forming a perfect circle of unspoiled earth around the base of the tree.

She cautiously approached the new addition to the garden. As she did, the vines snapped at her ankles in a final attempt to find their grasp. They missed narrowly and seemed unwilling to extend beyond the circle formed by the deflected rain.

As she reduced the distance between herself and the heart of the tree, she noticed that the many drops of rain on her arms and shoulders were drying. The warmth radiating from the tree took the chill away and she realized that the dried red rain had left no stain.

She looked back to see the intense hatred of the flowers she had passed through. They were hissing her many names unintelligibly straining at their roots trying to reach her but stopped by the invisible barrier formed by the canopy of the tree eventually calming their cries until their sounds were few and far between and lost in the rustling of the leaves above her.

She knew what came next and felt the earth shift beneath her. But this time it did not fall away to form an inescapable pit. Rather it rose up slightly so that the tree now sat on a slight hill with no chance of the flood outside its span flowing toward them.

Even the usual portent of her doom, the weathered black and yellow ball, had found a notch in the wall where it now sat. For once, ceasing its endless motion within the dry shelter of the tree but still and forever out of her reach.

She found a small pocket between the exposed roots that formed a perfect seat, sculpted to the contour of her. She turned her back to the trunk of the tree, sat and leaned back with her knees tucked to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees.

Within this cocoon she was warm and sheltered as she had never felt before. The warmth intensified and she felt herself relax as she laid her head against her knees and fell into a pleasant sleep.

.

* * *

.

Route 101, southbound; 2:30 am

.

The SUV must have hit a bump that roused her. She had fallen asleep against him but it wasn't just her laying her head on his shoulder. He had shifted his torso toward her and had his back to the door of the vehicle. She couldn't help but check to be sure the door was locked - his safety always the first thought in her mind. But his body position had enabled her to worm her way into his side and rest her head against his chest and neck.

He had also somehow ended up with his arm draped around her holding her loosely in her current position. She assessed the state of her limbs and realized that her left arm was tucked behind his back and around his waist while the other was resting lightly on his chest. Thankfully it hadn't wandered into a more embarrassing location. Chuck seemed to be resting too so she remained perfectly still as she reflected on the day.

Casey had to stay behind and complete clean up. She didn't want to stick him with it but it wouldn't have been believable for her to attend a football game with her boyfriend at his alma mater and then stay behind at his old campus rather than riding home with him.

Well, that and the fact that Sarah wore out the statuesque recruit who had saved Chuck from a crossbow bolt through the chest for having her phone turned off. Sarah had found the two of them chatting in the hallway. Her name was Naomi, she was originally from Hawaii and Chuck had apparently tutored her in advanced mathematics his senior year while she was still a high school student preparing to attend Stanford the following fall. And with her hand on his arm as they chatted amicably they were entirely too familiar for two people who hadn't seen each other in four years.

Sarah had quickly tired of being called Ma'am as the younger woman just took everything Sarah dished out about communication protocols. Until a humbled Naomi stopped Sarah in her tracks when she further apologized for not reporting to the lecture hall, as instructed in Chuck's message. Naomi had instead followed a man with a crossbow into one of the computer labs.

Only then did Sarah realize. Chuck had sent _all_ of the recruits to save Casey and herself. She had been irritated with Naomi because Sarah thought she was the only recruit Chuck had dispatched to his own position and she had almost missed the call. But despite being the one to make the calls, no one was coming to help Chuck. If Naomi hadn't been late and had instead coordinated with the other recruits, it would have been Chuck - alone - against a highly trained man with a crossbow.

Sarah had dismissed Naomi - after conceding that she had made the right choice in following her instincts, thanking her and saying her good judgment made up for her lapse in protocol - and returned to Chuck whose only concern had been whether he had gotten the recruits in some kind of trouble.

He had, of course. They had all been activated well before they were intended to be and would have to be thoroughly debriefed to determine whether they posed any ongoing operational risk. But luckily the only one who had seen Chuck already knew him.

Then he asked if _he_ was in trouble.

Sarah just took him by the hand and went to find Ellie and Awesome for the ride home and took a deep breath before responding.

"No, Chuck. It was good thinking. Best use of the available resources. And I'm not mad at Naomi, not really." How could she be when the other woman had saved Chuck? She had just reacted to her own adrenaline withdrawal. The recruit had made a small mistake and was an easy target for her to vent all the negative energy that had built up within her. And she would have to conceal to her superiors the fact that Chuck had, once again, considered his handlers well-being before his own. "I'm just...why didn't you run? As far and as fast as you could?"

"And leave you there? I just...couldn't."

They had stayed for post-game festivities end Sarah had enjoyed playing her role of Chuck's girlfriend. Just drinking and talking and playing pointless games and laughing. She watched him being ridiculously charming and silly as the lone Stanford alum of their group - acting as ambassador of the losing home team to ensure no trouble started between the two groups of fans and showing no signs of having been nearly killed a few hours ago except an abundance of adrenaline-fueled energy. She was exhausted but he seemed like he could go on for days.

He really was a remarkable man, she thought as she held his hand tightly all the way back to the parking lot as they said their goodbyes to Devon's friends. Kind and thoughtful and compassionate.

She hoped it didn't get him killed.

.

* * *

.

It was that thought - that need to protect him - that, as warm and comfortable as she was, caused the agent in her to scream to sit up and remove herself from the compromising position she had awakened in. As she tightened her muscles to move he held her tighter and just as she was about to fight her way free she froze when he whispered into her hair "Sarah, shhhhh...it was just a dream."

How did he know that? She was sure she never thrashed about when she dreamed. Even when she had that one. Had he picked up on some subtle change in her breathing or the tension in her body as she slept? Or maybe she had reacted physically to the thought of Chuck sacrificing himself for her or just how close he had come to being killed.

"Where are we?" she asked quietly instead.

He replied softly in his normal voice but not much louder than a whisper. "On the 101. Halfway to Salinas. Barely started, really. Haven't even made the turn to get on the 5. We'll be cruising for another four and a half hours or so. Relax. Rest."

Sarah glanced to the front seat and saw Ellie already sleeping in the passenger seat. The fingers of Ellie's left hand were entwined with those of Devon's right on top of the center console. Devon was driving and humming along to the road trip mix Chuck had given him ages ago - his deep voice rumbling like distant thunder.

She didn't really see the harm and no threats were likely while on the Interstate. "OK," she whispered. "But you too. And promise to wake me if we stop anywhere."

They were both sure she would wake herself if the vehicle stopped but he whispered "I promise," just the same. She nestled her head under his chin and smiled at the rumble of his voice when next he spoke. It wasn't as low a tone as Devon's but she felt it in her bones like a lion's roar or a thunder clap directly above her.

"You push yourself too hard, Sarah," she was starting to drift back to sleep and hypnotized by the way he was gently stroking her arm. The warmth of him overtook her and just before she dozed of she vaguely thought of a warm, safe place in the shadow of a massive oak tree.

"Let me take care of you for just a little bit." She purred a little "mmmm" at that which he took as assent and was asleep before he breathed in the lavender scent of her hair and breathed out his last thoughts on the topic in a whisper.

"Let me have this."

Sarah slept peacefully without dreaming until the vehicle slowed as they neared the apartment complex. For those few treasured hours Chuck held her and stayed awake watching over her in an attempt to keep her demons at bay.

.

* * *

.

053: You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

.

* * *

_"The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth._

_It's favorite diet is adventurers, but it's insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. _

_No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale."_

_\- Zork_ (Response to the player's question: _'What is a grue?'_)

* * *

.

Casa Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski, Echo Park, CA; Later that morning

.

"You didn't think we'd let you keep that, did you?"

Early this morning, she had dropped her things at her car while Chuck, Ellie and Devon went inside. She entered shortly thereafter only to scold him good-naturedly for having a beer for breakfast and saw him crash on his bed before returning home to her apartment to freshen up after sleeping most of the ride home. He had only been up for a few minutes - long enough to shower and dress - when she returned later.

Chuck turned quickly, his guilt clearly written on his face, to see her standing in his doorway. Sarah Walker. Beautiful as always with her hair up and dressed simply but perfectly in slacks, a plain white t-shirt and a vest that hugged her as tightly as he had hours before.

His protector who he dared to think he could protect from whatever demons haunted her dreams.

She glanced toward the object of contention between them. A disk in his hand that held identities of numerous CIA recruits but, more importantly to him in this moment, a possible piece of a puzzle that he hadn't realized existed until a few days ago.

Why was he in the Intersect?

"I need to know, Sarah."

"Okay, Chuck."

He was surprised that she agreed - even more so that she walked over to watch over his shoulder to watch as he watched - seemingly as interested in the contents as he was. The playback began with a slightly younger Professor Fleming speaking into the camera before an appointment.

.

.

.

"Test subject 0326. Bartowski. This will be his first interview," he said to the camera before keying the intercom on his phone. "Send Chuck in."

Both Chuck, who was uncertain if this was filmed as part of a visit he remembered to Fleming's office, and Sarah were surprised by who came through the door.

"Bryce. This isn't a good time. I'm waiting for another student."

"Chuck Bartowski? He never got your message."

"What are you talking about?"

That could have easily been either Chuck's or Sarah's question but the younger Bryce on the recording answered it with a surprising accusation. "You put Chuck on the CIA recruitment track."

"It's not up to me, Bryce. They want him for the Omaha Project," Fleming replied unaffected. Sarah was shocked. Chuck had been targeted for recruitment long before she met him when he was press-ganged into government service. And she had heard rumors about the project - some sort of umbrella term for many different projects intended to create a better soldier. Rumors that Bryce quickly confirmed.

"But that's a military operation. They'll turn Chuck into..."

Sarah thought she knew what Bryce was going to say. Bryce had somehow already seen enough to know that he didn't want to see Chuck become what he had become - to become what she had become - but Fleming interrupted. "I'm required to send all the top test results to the agency."

"I want my friend out of this." She knew that look and that tone. She wondered whether this might have been the first time Bryce used it. Either way, she knew life was about to get much more complicated for Professor Fleming.

"He's a perfect candidate. Keywords in his essay responses correlate to 98% of the subliminal images in the exam."

Oh, God. Based off her briefing on the topic, those results were unheard of. It would seem Chuck was always meant to be the host of the Intersect. With results like that, they weren't going to let him go. And, on the video, Bryce was just as agitated at that thought.

"You don't get it. Chuck's a good person. He's got too much heart for this kind of work. He's no operative. You can't put him out in the field. He won't survive."

Sarah wasn't entirely sure about that but Fleming's response confirmed her suspicion. "The agency is not gonna let go of a recruit this promising. The amount of information he can retain..."

"They're not gonna give him a choice?"

"He's in no matter what."

She thought for a moment about her own carefully coordinated recruitment at not quite sixteen. Her father arrested. Herself confronted in the woods by a frightening man who was now the Director of the CIA. She wondered whether Chuck would have naïvely signed on for a life of intrigue or if threats would have had to be made. Maybe against Ellie.

Sarah couldn't imagine the woman who had just let her in this morning - on her way to a 24 hour shift on the same amount of sleep as the agent - reduced to something less than the woman she knew due to Graham's interfering in a way designed to ensure Chuck's compliance. If they had done something like that, Chuck would have done anything they said. There would have been no way out.

"If he cheated on the exam, copied all the answers..." And there it was. The way out. She was sure Bryce had given it some thought. A little lie wouldn't do. They might just re-test him or otherwise still consider Chuck a viable candidate. It had to be big. It had to discredit him entirely. "Then it would invalidate the results, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now you're going to help me, professor. I don't know how many of your students you've sent to The Agency but you're not getting this one. Don't make me show you what they've turned the rest of us into."

.

.

.

Both Chuck and Sarah stared at the screen even after the playback had ended. Sarah was focused on the thought that Bryce had not completed. What he feared the government would turn Chuck into. She could see it in his eyes. She could feel it in her own heart. It was the same answer for either of them and neither of them would want to state it plainly.

Me.

They'll turn Chuck into me.

Or maybe it was just what she had been thinking about herself. It seemed like Bryce was contradicting himself but Sarah understood. Bryce had only been an agent for a year and saw only two outcomes. Either Chuck would find himself in a situation where he literally would not survive. Wouldn't be able to make a hard choice and would pay for it with his life. Or worse - he would. And sacrifice himself.

Or the second possibility and worse yet - he would make a hundred such choices and, although he might physically survive, the Chuck that Bryce knew and the Chuck that Sarah was just starting to know would still, gradually and painfully, cease to exist.

In the here and now, Chuck was the first to speak, full of disbelief.

"Bryce framed me for cheating...to save me. Why didn't he just tell me that to begin with?"

The same reason she herself told him half-truths and sheltered him from harsh realities. Along with not wanting to give him too many clues about her darker side but for now she boiled it down to the official, strictly professional reasons. "He couldn't. They had already recruited him."

"Well, if he had good reason for getting me kicked out, maybe he had a good reason to break into The Intersect, too."

"Maybe he had a good reason for sending it to you." Sarah couldn't see how but neither could she tell Chuck all of what she believed to be Bryce's reasoning without explaining all the things she despised about herself.

"I just wish I could talk to him. It must have tore him up to not be able to tell me." And that was why she couldn't say for certain that Bryce had done the wrong thing. This man, despite his best friend's multiple betrayals, still thought about Bryce's feelings.

"He always looked out for me, you know?" Chuck continued as he reminisced about his one-time best friend, other than Morgan. "He was the oldest in our class. Three years older than me even though we were in the same year. Lost a year in junior high for disciplinary reasons and bummed around Europe for nearly a year between junior and senior years of High School. After his parents died. By the time they realized where he was he was legally an adult. He once told me I was the only family he had left. We were drunk and I thought it was just bullshit but this...this is the kind of thing I would do for Ellie."

This was all news to Sarah. She had assumed she and Bryce were roughly the same age and they never discussed each other's pasts. She had trusted him with her life and found some brief comfort in his bed occasionally but neither had let the other in. Not really. Whatever they had, she had never loved him. Or him her. Bryce's last true relationship had been with Chuck.

"No one can know about this," Sarah finished curtly as she rounded Chuck's chair to retrieved the disk. "For your own safety, okay?"

"Sure. No one would believe me anyway. But he should have let me decide-"

Sarah felt a need to stop that line of thinking in its tracks. "There was nothing for you to decide, Chuck. Once those results were passed along, Fleming said it himself, you were in no matter what. They weren't going to give you a choice. Bryce was the only person with the ability to keep you off that path. And consequences be damned, when Bryce makes up his mind about something-"

"But the path that HE took? That you and Casey took? What do you think? Would I not survive? I mean, I know I'm no...whatever...but am I too weak to even consider the idea? Wouldn't it have been better than the limbo I've been living in since Stanford? The limbo that I'm still living in just with more gunplay?"

He doesn't realize that except for Naomi, the recruits he contacted weren't necessarily prototypical physical specimens. They all have their abilities just as Chuck does. But now she sees it. Sees what Bryce saw when he said Chuck wouldn't survive. He's not weak. He's not inept. But he is special. A strong, brave man with a gentle soul assailed on all sides by forces that want to destroy him. Tear him apart. Use him for their own ends and leave a shell of him behind. She couldn't let that happen either. Then, in Bryce's shoes, or now in her own.

"I don't know if I agree with what he did or not Chuck. He hurt you and he chose your fate for you but I wouldn't want to see you changed into a harder, colder version of yourself either. You're better than that. You're too good for those kinds of things."

_Better than us. Too good for someone like me._

"Too good to deal with doing something I don't like for a greater good?" Chuck asked.

She tried not to bristle at the words 'greater good'; the mythical ends that justified all means.

"It's never just one something, Chuck. If it were one thing maybe you could rationalize whatever it was that you did; the thing that you wished you didn't have to do. Convince yourself that it was right. That it was necessary. And if that was the last time you had to make such a choice maybe you could put it behind you and not let it eat away at you. But, Chuck..."

She knelt down in front of him, as though he could grant her absolution, and she parroted the truths she learned from a mentor when she was sliding down the rabbit hole and still had some hope that she was near the bottom. Or that there even was a bottom.

"...when you choose this life. Doing things you'd rather not do? It never stops."

"But what if I could have helped somehow? Helped to share the load of those horrible things?" The way he was looking down at her she knew he wasn't talking about Bryce...or at least not _just_ about Bryce. "At least I wouldn't have squandered the time he gave me if I had known the reasons for it. Instead he deliberately hurt me to save me. To leave one of us untouched while he took that whole burden by himself. I just...I don't know what to _do_ with that."

_God, you sweet, sweet man._ He had never said anything mean spirited about Bryce. Not really. Not to her. That venom was reserved for comments from Morgan and even from Ellie who Sarah couldn't imagine hating anybody. Chuck was always very matter-of-fact about Bryce's betrayals. But she also knew from experience that was how Chuck often expressed contempt.

She could see the wheels turning as Chuck processed what his friend had done to him. Expulsion was only part of it. Bryce had also slept with Chuck's girlfriend. And although it was remarkably cruel, the plan was sound. If Bryce were trying to keep Chuck away from him there wasn't anything much more unforgivable he could have done. And she watched Chuck's face as he too processed all of that she realized she was watching Chuck forgive his dead friend. It only reinforced the man that Chuck was. The man who inspired fierce loyalty in those who were fortunate enough to call him a friend.

Sarah thought to herself that after two years as his partner this may be the first time she has ever seen a true glimpse of the man Bryce Larkin once was. Someone who would sacrifice himself to not drag someone he cared about down with him. Then she wondered why, after making that sacrifice, he had dragged Chuck into their world anyway. Wondered if she were just as far gone and could no longer see what was truly right and stand up to defend it.

She had once questioned the fact that Bryce was known in the intelligence community by his real name. It seemed foolish but he had told her that he had severed every tie to his former life. Chuck was that last tie. And he hurt his friend deeply to save him. She had once wondered how Bryce could have been friends with someone as sweet and good as Chuck. Now she wondered how he had the strength to give something pure like that up in order to preserve it. And whether she could ever do the same.

"It's an impossible choice. But at least you know now that he had a reason."

"It's _my_ life, Sarah," he snapped before turning quieter. "Was my life..."

"I know, Chuck." she whispered. She reached out to reassuringly touch his knee but stopped abruptly and pulled her hand back as her muddled thoughts begin to crystallize. It would be hypocritical to try to reassure him as she stood, left Chuck to his thoughts and closed the door to his bedroom.

.

* * *

.

054: The Dark Places of the Earth

.

Sarah stepped outside Chuck's room and paused for a moment. Bryce had dismantled Chuck's life to make sure his friend was not press-ganged into a dangerous, soul-destroying world. Their world.

They weren't going to give Chuck a choice. Even if Bryce could have explained it all to him, Chuck still couldn't have escaped it. What irony then that Bryce had later sent the Intersect to Chuck making his destruction of Chuck's academic career a reprieve rather than a pardon.

The more she thought about it the more she thought that she would do the same thing. She is doing the same thing right now. Protecting him from being dragged any further into a world that would irrevocably change him into something less.

She knew he would never hurt her but that's because he was different. He was better.

Whereas if she has to hurt him to save him, she will.

Save him from a world that has turned her into the monster in the darkness that she never wants him to see. The dark world where she was known only by reputation as the boogeyman of the spy world.

There is a brighter world where he belongs. One that she exists to protect from people like her, never to set foot in herself.

_I live to make you free._

No matter how comforted and wanted he makes her feel the truth is inescapable and she can't stop the tears from welling in her eyes as she faces that truth for what it is.

She doesn't belong here.

.

* * *

.

Chuck just sat staring into space for several minutes. Sarah had left and taken the disk with her telling him she had to secure it until they either were instructed to destroy it or to make arrangements for secure transport. And to tell no one that there was any reference to him on it.

He wondered what she really thought of Bryce's actions. It seemed to him that the CIA was the most fucked up club in the world - their members regretted the things they had done to become members and cautioned those they cared about to run as far from it as possible.

After a while he stood and went outside to the garbage cans. The picture of himself, Bryce and two of their frat brothers was still on top so he retrieved it from its broken frame. He had been so angry at Bryce for so long. Thought he had inadvertently done something to turn Bryce against him or had been betrayed out of sheer spite. Now, four and a half years later, he learns that one of the two things that his best friend at Stanford had done to become his most hated person ever was done in a misguided attempt to protect him.

The second, Jill, may have been another way of pushing him away but that was different. Or had seemed different at the time. He thought she was 'the one' - going so far as planning to buy a ring with part of his first few paychecks - but she had not stood by him after his expulsion. At one time he had wondered whether Bryce had secretly coveted Jill all along and orchestrated a grand conspiracy to get him out of the way. Now, knowing his true motivation, there was nothing more to gain from Bryce's standpoint but Jill had already cut her ties with him. Was it really an additional betrayal once she had decided to end things?

So it was really all back to that one lie. The one intended to keep him out of the government's hands and this idea that he wouldn't survive. It wasn't the first time he had considered what the government's end game might be for him but the flow chart of possible outcomes was forming in his mind.

It was clear from the discussion between Fleming and Bryce that he was always intended for this 'Omaha Project'. Always intended to be the Intersect or some version of it. Bryce had tried to stop it but then sent it to him years later anyway.

They were going to force him to join. It wasn't optional. Why was Bryce so against that?

He had always admired the fundamental nobility of both Sarah and Casey and their service to the country but Sarah had just indicated it was never black and white. _'Doing things you'd rather not do. It never stops.'_

He remembered Carina explaining why a spy never wants you to know anything real about them and considered Sarah's reluctance to show anything real about herself when everything he had caught a glimpse of so far was of a wonderful woman. How much had she compromised her ideals? How much had that shaped her? How much had that hurt her?

What had Bryce seen that made him so dead set against the idea of him joining the CIA? Of Chuck following in his footsteps?

This whole ordeal at Stanford had been about a disk with several agent identities - one he was unsure whether it would be secured or destroyed - yet his own mind held all, or practically all, of the secrets of the government.

All those secrets in his head made him such a valuable piece of intelligence that he had two of the best agents the nation had watching over him to ensure he was safe.

Two agents. A redundant system. If one fails, the backup engages. And he thought of the spies he had encountered who had given him the pieces he needed to make sense of it all.

Casey primarily interested in national security. Supporting the idea of securing him in a bunker that first night. His primary concern, to ensure he never fell into enemy hands.

Sarah - so reluctant to pull back the veil on all the things he already suspected about her own past - just now referring to a disk containing a minuscule fraction of the intelligence housed in his own brain. Because intel must be either secured or destroyed.

And finally Carina. Brutally honest about everything but herself and her own motivations. _Because you may have to leave them..._

The spinning of his mind abruptly stopped as the puzzle clicked into place and he fully realized for the first time just how precarious his situation is.

_...or put a bullet in their head..._

If things go too far south, he's been living with his executioners.

And worse, he understood why.

.

* * *

.

055: A Simple Request

.

Major John Casey's Residence; Echo Park, CA; a short while later

.

"Hey Casey."

John Casey had opened his front door after three separate but increasingly insistent sets of a few sharp knocks to find Chuck Bartowski standing outside and he responded with a curt "Yeah."

"Can I come in?" Chuck asked. "It's mission related."

Casey just walked away from the front door without answering allowing Chuck to follow. "Sarah around?" Chuck asked as he did.

"I'm supposed to keep tabs on your fake girlfriend now? She's securing that disk you failed to turn over." In fact, she had come over and discussed it with Casey. The fact that Chuck had been targeted for 'enhanced recruitment' five years ago and that Bryce and Professor Fleming had conspired to keep Chuck's testing results - indicating his suitability for what she assumed to be some predecessor of Intersect - a secret.

Sarah and Casey had made the case for destroying it but Graham wanted to know which agents and recruits may have been exposed. The order was to secure it at Casey's apartment until the disk could be retrieved by courier. An animated discussion had followed where he and his partner had agreed to copy the disk, omitting Chuck's file, and destroy the original. Luckily Casey had the right software for convincingly backdating the files.

Chuck at least had the courtesy to look guilty for snagging the disk and viewing its contents. But Casey had been the one who had encouraged him to do so when they first obtained it never thinking it would be something this potentially volatile.

"Yeah, right." Chuck said sheepishly. "She said something about that. And I guess she told you I watched my file? Sorry, I had to know."

"Get to the point Bartowski, you said this was mission related." Casey was still a little hesitant about tampering with the data and they had to get the copy completed before the courier arrived.

"Right, well, I've been thinking-"

"Great. That's always an adventure," Casey interrupted hoping to get a read on the younger man.

Chuck's demeanor seemed different and what he said next, after a deep breath and steeling his resolve, was completely unexpected.

"I was thinking maybe you should teach me how to use a gun?"

"Itching for some action there Wyatt Earp? Go out in a blaze of glory?"

Chuck laughed grimly at that. "Oh no, not me. But I figure if there's a situation where I'm taken and you guys can't stop it you might have to take me out. I'm not judging or anything. No telling what kind of torture they would have in mind. I guess you'd probably be doing me a favor. But if you guys weren't able to take the shot, well, maybe I could get a hold of one of their guns..."

"And what? Shoot your own way out?"

"Doubt it. I don't think I'd be able to shoot someone even if it was to get away from them. I'm not even sure I could shoot someone in the leg or something. Not that that would stop them from shooting me. But I could...resolve the situation. I don't even have to be a good shot, I just have to be able to use the stupid thing. Maybe I would just die of embarrassment but I'd rather not have my big heroic moment end up with me clicking away with a gun with the safety on or something."

Casey stood motionless studying the young man for a moment and considering the scenario Chuck seemed to have come up with. His respect for the young man grew considerably when he appreciated the gravity of why he was asking what he was asking.

"Fine, kid. We'll start next week. I'll teach you how to handle a few different types of handguns. Nothing flashy - mostly disassembling and reassembling - the same way I was taught. You've got a long way to go before I ever actually let you fire a weapon. Think you could do it?"

"Take something apart and put it back together? Sure. That's kinda what I do."

"No, not that. A monkey could do that. If you were taken...to protect the Intersect...could you do it?"

Chuck shrugged. "I hope we never have to find out. But I appreciate why it has to be that way...Hey, maybe I could get one of those cyanide teeth. That's a thing, right?"

"Yeah, that's a thing. But you really think that's the best idea for you to have suicide capsule in your mouth all the time?"

"Good point. Especially, with Sarah around. I nearly bit my own tongue off the first time I saw her in that Weiner-girl uniform...and that dress she wore for..."

Casey coughed loudly to cut Chuck off "I don't think I'm comfortable with the turn this conversation is taking. Why don't you go try to get some sleep?"

"Not tired. I was a little but I had a Red Bull. But I do have another professional question. I was watching a cop show..." he powered on without waiting for approval "...and they had a sniper take a guy out by shooting him in the brain stem. It made me wonder, do they feel much when they're dying if they get shot that way?"

"That shot's for hostage situations or guys with remote triggers...just not a dead-man's switch or a live grenade. Don't want them dropping one of those. But if it's a positive action trigger that kinda shot prevents any unwanted reflex action if you hit 'em in the apricot."

"Apricot?"

"The medulla oblongata."

"Ahh, makes alligators ornery."

"Controls involuntary actions, dummy. You actually have to shoot through the cerebellum to make the hit. Make that shot and your target's a rag doll. Cerebellum's shaped like an apricot."

Chuck's hyperactive mind danced between the thoughts that Casey really had an overly developed knowledge of human anatomy and why that was and wondering whether Ellie ever compared a cerebellum, or any other body part, to a fruit. He assumed the latter was possible. Both Casey and Ellie had studied the human brain and nervous system and both might find a need to dehumanize that knowledge to separate themselves from the lives they sustained. Just for very different reasons. The only reaction Chuck could muster was "Colorful."

"Any hit with a 50 cal sniper rifle is 'colorful' but the idea is to stop them from doing something bad after you shot 'em. You can make the same shot with a smaller caliber weapon without all the head exploding dramatics. I don't think they live long enough to ask 'em - not that they could answer - but assuming the target's head isn't completely removed at the base of the skull, waiting for your brain to suffocate because your lungs and heart shut down doesn't sound particularly peaceful to me."

"Yeah, me either." Chuck conceded but it didn't get him any closer to the point of his visit. "So how would you do it? Like, if you wanted it to be painless?"

"If you want to put someone down mercifully? Bullet in the brain pan. Squish. Just like flipping a switch."

"Fine. Put me down for that. But I want you to look me in the eye when you do it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Like I said, I've been thinking. And it _is_ always an adventure. What happens when this is all over?"

"I guess you go back to your happy little life."

"Do I?" Only then did Casey look up and see that Chuck was staring at him with steely intensity. "I mean if there's a new Intersect and I still have the old one they wouldn't really want goofy lil ole me running around loose. And they wouldn't want to waste two of their best agents watching out for me if they had newer models that could look out for themselves. Even if they can remove the Intersect would they even bother to? And if they did, I still know stuff. Just because it took having the Intersect to access the information doesn't mean I forgot it."

"You shouldn't be telling me stuff like this..."

"They wanted me in a bunker. I won't go. Besides giving up everything that makes my life my life, I'd have to live every second wondering if they changed their mind about whether I was worth the hassle of keeping alive. They keep the two of you here to protect me because they need me for now. But I know what happens to obsolete computers when a new model comes out."

"Look, Chuck. That's just not what we do to innocent American citizens." _Unless you're an unacceptably extreme risk. Unless risks outweigh your benefits. Unless you're Chuck Bartowski._ John Casey knew his current orders and it would seem Chuck suspected them. He couldn't afford for either him or Walker to suspect anything. Luckily, he was a pretty good liar too. "You're a very valuable-"

"Don't bullshit me, Casey. OK, so maybe that's not our biggest concern right now so I'm gonna channel my inner Keanu...pop quiz: You and Sarah are standing on one rooftop and you only have one bullet between you - I'm on the next rooftop with two enemy agents - they're going to take me and the secrets in my head with me - you cant stop it - which one do you shoot? And no bullshit answers like I get them to stand front to back so you can take them with one shot. No magic bullets. Which one do you shoot?"

Casey knew the answer to this question immediately out of years of experience and training but didn't answer. Instead he just stared at Chuck while he clenched his jaw and wondered where this sense of responsibility for the intel he had never wanted dumped into his brain was coming from.

"Neither, right?" Chuck continued. "But there's _three_ people on that roof. You know the score and you're definitely firing that bullet and someone's catching it. You can't stand there and do nothing. You're not wired for it. And I know the only reason I'm not in a bunker right now is because you guys convinced your bosses that if they want actionable intel it's better to keep me out. If they have me in that bunker, I'm a sitting duck. They'll figure out their plan B at some point and if I were in that bunker they could just seal the door and wait, or fill it with gas, or bring a bullet of their own. A fish in a barrel."

Casey just gaped at him. He knew from surveillance that Chuck had a hard time shutting down and getting any sleep at night. He bordered on concerned - for the proper functioning of the Intersect, of course - and had wondered if Chuck might benefit from some sort of sleep aid but didn't think bringing up the idea of drugging him would go over very well with Beckman or Graham. Or Walker. This is what Chuck laid awake thinking about all those nights. How his own government was eventually going to kill him.

"One day you might have to do what you do and all I'm asking is I want you to look me in the eye when you do it. That and a good story for Ellie. Something that will make it OK. Or as OK as it can be. Nothing violent or traumatic."

"Chuck, the US Government is not in the business of murdering its own citizens." He hoped, for all their sakes, that had sounded convincing for now and that a better solution would present itself eventually. Either way, this plea for a personal touch wasn't going to sway him from his duty once any objections were overruled and final decisions were made.

"And I thought I was the naive one," Chuck actually smiled at him. "Fine. Let's keep up whatever appearances we need to make ourselves feel better but what I need to know is, whether you'll extend me that courtesy. Whether we understand each other."

Casey returned his stare and nodded slightly. "Five by five. That's a military thing. It means-"

"It means 'Loud and Clear'. I know. We nerds sort of stole that one. Thanks Casey." He hopped up and practically floated to the door like a load had been lifted from his shoulders. But he paused abruptly with his hand on the door handle and said without turning "Casey?"

"Yeah."

"One exception. Don't tell her I said so but if...if Sarah's involved, to distract me or something, then I don't want to know. Just turn the lights out. Try not to get too much...whatever on her. I just don't want my last thought to be wondering whether she set me up ...but its hard to think of a better last sight...if she is my last sight." Chuck finally turned his head to see Casey's response with a sad smile on his face as he thought that there probably wasn't a better last sight than Sarah Walker.

Casey just nodded in acknowledgement. Chuck actually smiled back. Casey was shocked to see that he actually seemed relieved, lighter, having gotten that off his chest. And thought to himself that the kid had real stones to come to him like this as he continued out the door and closed it gently behind him.

Casey's eyes remained fixed on the door as he called out "You get all that Walker?"

They had been copying the disk in his bedroom when Chuck arrived and the vault they used to temporarily secure intel was in Casey's linen closet. And, whenever she had crept down the hallway, she had been as quiet as a mouse but Casey knew she was there.

There was a smaller vault in Sarah's hotel room but she was not willing to transport materials with Chuck's name and history so prominently mentioned over even those few additional miles. She had come straight here and convinced Casey to go along with her plan to remove all mention of Chuck. She herself wasn't sure why she hadn't announced her presence.

Maybe it was so Chuck didn't know that she had shared what they had watched on his computer screen. Maybe it was for security purposes - so he didn't know that intel was secured at Casey's apartment. But maybe it was just so she could hear what he had come to Casey to discuss.

And she had.

Sarah slowly rounded the corner with her eyes fixed on the door Chuck had just left through and her right hand clutching her shirt over her heart.

.

* * *

_"...and a grue took hold upon her flesh,_

_and the cold of the grave upon her belly,_

_and the terror of death upon her soul."_

\- Robert Louis Stevenson, _The Waif Woman_ (1916)

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: So endeth Disk One (Oh how I hate the lack of an episode menu on the S1 and S2 disks! I haven't looked in a while, S3 DVDs have episode selection right? But in S1 they crammed SEVEN episodes onto disk one and only three each on the other two.)

How unbalanced is Graham's Enforcer? Not Sarah mind you, the Enforcer? Agent Zero. (Here one is an 'it', the other is a 'she'.) Didn't forget about Graham's pet project did we? How much of it is programming and how much is Sarah already resisting that conditioning? Did Bryce take away a choice from Chuck, or from those who would have forced Chuck into their world? Doesn't Chuck have enough data points now to puzzle out the possible outcomes for himself? Would he realize the logic of it even if he didn't agree with it?

Etcetera, etcetera. I hope to keep things a little fresh even for those who have watched as many times and pondered it as much as I have. Hopefully these are some fresh, different angles for you guys to consider...

* * *

About the Grue: In the flashback at the end of Alma Matter we are shown the first meeting between Bryce and Chuck. When Chuck mentions Zork, Bryce responds with 'You are likely to be eaten by a grue.' I have no idea whether the show intended to portray the spy world as the 'grue' and Chuck as likely to be devoured by it but that has always been my interpretation of the foreshadowing of Bryce's first words to Chuck. I also realize that not everyone knows what a grue is, so...

This installment contains every known reference (of any substance) to the grue that I could find. The original Zork itself, a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson and the title of this installment taken from Jack Vance's Dying Earth series (1950 - 1984) in which the fictional predator is described as being: part 'ocular bat' (whatever that is), part 'unusual hoon' (whatever that is) and part 'man' (whatever that is).

In (most versions of) Zork, the grue cannot be defeated or even FOUGHT. It is simply a way to force the adventurer to obtain a light source before venturing into a dark but otherwise unobstructed area, path, cavern, etc. If you venture into a dark area without a light you are informed that: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue". If you ask, "what is a grue?", the response is the quote in Ch 52. If you persist, you are (almost certainly) eaten immediately, definitely within a few turns, but cannot make any progress while wandering in the dark. When you obtain a light source and return, the grue is simply gone and you may proceed.

Vance is given the attribution for creating the word but it's not like saying 'vampire' or 'zombie'. There is no associated mythos that springs to mind just that brief description he gives referencing two equally unknown entities. Despite the usual attribution to Vance, the earliest reference I found to a grue was the 1916 short story 'The Waif Woman' by Robert Louis Stevenson. The quote at the end of this installment is the full context of the word provided in that story. Which is to say: not much. Perhaps that is why it is generally attributed to Vance though his description offers little more information. In Stevenson's story it is just a word with no other mention, elaboration or context.

So, unlike other fantastical beasts, the grue is a complete mystery. Perhaps none now live who have survived to tell the tale.

Beware the grue.

* * *

Song Notes: No ownership or claim to any of the songs refered to in this installment is asserted or implied. Hopefully you dug a little on your own but the songs mentioned in Ch 49 ('Love Letters') are, in order:

'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - Part I' by The Flaming Lips (2002, as weird as I describe),

'Birds and Boats' by Gregory and the Hawk, the performing and recording pseudonym of Meredith Godreau (2006-ish, other versions exist - none of which contain any birds, I prefer the demo version with no drum) and, of course,

'Nobody Does It Better' by Carly Simon (1977 but a must have for the spy stakeout mix; and the first Bond song where the title was not the same as the movie* - 'The Spy Who Loved Me')

This is in addition to Billy Joel's 'Always a Woman' from the previous chapter / previous installment (also 1977, same year as Star Wars AND Zork, helluva year).

I didn't think it was feasible that Chuck would wait two and a half years to share some of his love of music with Sarah given their conversation on their first date and the existence of her iPod in 'Cougars'. (When she was buying speakers my immediate thought was: "How can she not have a favorite band? Why would she own an iPod?") I also suspect he would choose a few songs that he thought were meaningful but not overtly romantic out of fear of scaring her away.

Extra music stuff: The code to Harry Tang's 'One Remote to Rule them All' is also the name of a Van Halen album from the 'Van Hagar' years (OU812; go on, sound it out. I know, it's not that funny). The title of Ch 51 ('Suicide Blonde') is meant as a reference to Sarah's Enforcer combat mode and her adrenaline junky tendencies that made it possible to embed that out-of-body persona and how they may appear to be suicidal to an observer. The usual connotation - besides the truly awesome INXS song of the same name (considering the use in that chapter, they also coincidentally have one called 'The Devil Inside') - is a woman (or anyone I suppose) with dyed hair. Usually very dark hair, dyed blonde. I didn't know where 'suicide' came into it until I researched it. Turns out its a bad pun: 'dyed by ones own hand', 'suicide' blonde. Get it? Nyuk, nyuk. It's the important stuff I like to call out in notes...

* * *

Bond Trivia Answers: I was a HUGE Bond fan in my youth. I really dislike some aspects now but am still fond of others. Sarah was singing the theme to 'Goldfinger' at some point on a movie night (which she must have just heard somewhere and which lends itself to a very derpy rendition). But they were watching 'GoldenEye', featuring Famke Jansen as Xenia Onatopp, a femme fatale who literally gets off on killing. (Those Bond people...smh)

The other three 'disconnected' opening theme song titles - not counting the first Bond film, 'Dr. No '(which used the first appearance of the James Bond Theme as its theme song) - are:

'All Time High' by Rita Coolidge from 'Octopussy' (snicker! C'mon, really? But at least they had more sense than to try to sing about it - 1983) and

two of the three most recent, 'You Know My Name' by Chris Cornell from 'Casino Royale' (2006) and

'Another Way to Die' by Jack Black and Alicia Keys from Quantum of Solace (2008; also the only duet from any Bond film)

*The theme to 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' is debatable (and predates 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and it's theme 'Nobody Does It Better') because it is an instrumental and therefore does not follow the convention of working the film title into the song (because how would you?). The love song 'We Have All the Time in the World' was also written for this film and is sometimes mistakenly considered the theme. It is Louis Armstrong's final recording before his death two years later. OHMSS is also the Bond-wears-a-kilt movie and, oh yeah, the one where Bond gets married.

(SPOILER) 'We have all the time in the world' is also the last line spoken in OHMSS, made all the more bitter by the ending. It is shown in a later movie to be the epitaph on Tracy Bond's tombstone. If you Google that tombstone you will note that her actual name is Teresa but as she says to Bond: "Teresa was a saint; I'm known as Tracy." (She was quite mentally unstable, and her father has some 'interesting' and archaic ideas about how to deal with that, making the whole courtship and marriage uncomfortably questionable in some ways.)

We'll see what happens with Bond 24 (tentatively titled 'Spectre' - which, for those not in the know, is roughly akin to naming a CHUCK movie 'Fulcrum') and whether rumored artists Sam Smith or Lana Del Ray or whoever gets the job can top Adele's 'Skyfall'. You can actually get betting odds on fourteen different artists; of those, my choice - aside from Adele - would be Thirty Seconds to Mars or Florence and the Machine.

(Hint: NO ONE tops Adele! In fact, rumors persist that they still desperately want Adele to be the first repeat artist of the franchise.)

* * *

This one was a doozy but delivered as promised. I learned my lesson so no ETA on the next one but I'm working on it...

Now go win some trivia challenges!


	20. XX: Zugzwang

...wherein Sarah Walker considers alternative tactics, Director Graham lays a trap and ill-conceived plans are reconsidered...

Canon Reference: Continuation of the insert from last installment leading into the complete events of episode 108 (Truth)

Contents: Five chapters but some are multi-scene. The first chapter is almost 6K with for scenes of wildly varying length but the remaining four chapters are between 1,500 and 3,000 each. This one didn't turn out as long as I expected (which sounds stupid 'cuz it's still 17K) but it is just as complicated as I expected. So... yay?

A/N: It should come as no surprise that the Truth is a complicated, tricky thing. So too is the episode 'Truth', especially given what I've established thus far between Chuck and Sarah. I had to mess around with more than one iconic scene to make it work, only keeping the bones of the scenario and portions of the dialogue. A bit different than my norm but I have my reasons.

I had a hard time coming up with a title for this one (meaningful titles often seem like the hardest part) and I'll save the full context for the end notes, as usual. But for now (unless you're a Google-cheater or have encountered the term) just know that 'Zugzwang' is a German term (z's are pronounced as 'ts' and w is a v sound, so its roughly: 'Tsug-tsvang'), literally translated as: 'compulsion to move'.

Colon Health: No, I did not forget a colon in last installment's title. I omitted it because apparently the character limit on chapter titles is 40. There is no instruction guide that tells you these things! You'd think - on a site with thousands of writers - one would volunteer to write a user guide. Am I right? (takes one step backward from the writer line up; 'cuz I seriously need someone else to tell me why iPad Copy-N-Paste almost never works now)

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Fight Club_, _Hannibal_, Indiana Jones or any songs by the Isley Brothers (just a mention), Britney Spears (just a title) or Billie Holiday ('_(I'm Just) Foolin' Myself_') is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XX: Zugzwang

* * *

.

056: Shadow Games

.

Major John Casey's Residence, Echo Lake, CA; November 2007

.

"Major, are you actually suggesting that we permit - in fact, _encourage_ \- The Intersect to handle a _firearm_?" General Beckman asked with more than a hint of incredulity.

After Chuck had left, Agent Casey had a long, drawn out, mostly clinical discussion with Agent Walker about theoretical operational scenarios and what possible outcomes of this mission he envisioned. His general position was that this mission was no different than any other and that she already knew the possibilities.

She had asked him directly whether he had any inkling of a termination order of any kind but they had thankfully been interrupted by the courier sent to retrieve Professor Fleming's disk sparing him the need to blatantly lie. Once the courier had secured it in a tamper proof case and left Casey had vaguely circled back to how the operation had evolved and how today's orders were not the same as their orders when they had first engaged Bartowski.

As an example, Casey shared that he had given an all clear to his team to kill Walker before he knew her and Walker recalled (without sharing) that she had been directly ordered to kill Chuck if he ran. She was nonplussed by the danger to herself and distracted enough by her own one-time orders to kill Chuck herself that she, to Casey's relief, did not directly return to the topic of termination orders.

Instead, Casey was able to convince Walker that Chuck's awareness of the security sensitivity of his existence and the proactive suggestions he had made regarding controlling those risks would be useful in guiding the decisions of their superiors. That it may make other future, less desirable decisions less likely. And that it was simply up to the two of them to ensure it never came to that.

At that, Walker had insisted that he make that suggestion to General Beckman as soon as possible knowing it would be disregarded by her own superior. He had used his planned verification of the courier pick up to do so and Beckman's reaction to his first suggestion about Chuck handling a firearm was initially about as receptive as he had expected.

"Yes ma'am. But, as I said, not with the intention of actively engaging in tactical operations. I believe the important thing here is that he has shown a thorough appreciation of the strategic risk he poses. Surely, given the proper training, his own willingness and ability to self-terminate in an extreme situation should be considered in any...contingency planning."

"Is there any reason to believe The Intersect intends to harm himself? He was not in the best state before our acquaintance with him and has shown some dissatisfaction with his current circumstances since."

Casey had made a calculated risk that General Beckman wouldn't mention the prior termination order - which technically still stood - while considering this additional information and Casey was glad she had not mentioned it yet. The idea that Bartowski might use any weapon Casey provided to off himself was not a risk he had considered, not that he intended to leave Bartowski unsupervised. He supposed that was part of why she was the General but she hadn't seen what Casey had seen of the young man in question.

"No ma'am. Not at all. In fact, he seems to have a renewed sense of purpose."

If Casey could have seen Walker's reaction to that he was sure it would be one of pride. He had to admit that the kid had completely turned things around from just sleepwalking through one day after the next for the past few years. He was still a wild card half the time but Casey was willing to chalk that up to a lack of training and the newness of the situations. In fact, Casey had grown to respect Bartowski's ability to quickly deconstruct a scenario, find the weak spot and act. Casey would never have thought it and he certainly had no plans to tell the him. He was hard enough to protect as it was.

"It seems a little contradictory, John. That this young man would be so keen to be rid of our involvement in his life yet so willing to sacrifice himself."

"I know he's a bit of a complainer but not nearly what we expected. This is a lot to have thrust onto you. Its really better than we had any right to expect. He's finding his way," Casey said as he struggled to find the right words to describe Chuck Bartowski. He was surprised by what he came up with.

"He's...he's a soldier ma'am. Not the most conventional one, not what you and I are used to, but he does the right thing. Unfailingly."

General Beckman paused and sat back heavily in her desk chair. Her expression revealed that she appreciated the gravity of those words coming from this man before she spoke again.

"Very well, Major. I'll take it under advisement and extend the courtesy of running it by Director Graham before formal approval. In the meantime, feel free to begin his _basic_ firearms training. I leave it to your discretion but no live ammo and he is _not_ to be left unsupervised with a firearm until then. If that is all..."

"Actually ma'am," Casey interrupted as the General leaned forward to disconnect the video conference, "I thought there might be something we could do about that dissatisfaction with his circumstances you mentioned."

Casey was careening headlong off the reservation now. He had not discussed this part with Walker but had been considering it for a while now. He had kept it in his pocket as a potential distraction in case the General had moved to the topic of his still-standing termination orders but now seemed as good a time as any. Walker could thank him later.

"You indicated that was not a concern, Major."

"Not for his general well-being ma'am but it could, conceivably, impact the continued function of the Intersect."

_That_ got her attention. "Go on."

"It's about this cover relationship with Walker," Casey kept his focus on the screen to avoid being distracted by anything around him.

"Is there any reason for concern? Has she expressed any reservations?" the diminutive General asked with a hint of actual concern.

"No ma'am. Everyone in Bartowski's inner circle thinks shes the best thing to ever happen to him. She's a consummate professional. Everything Graham said she was."

"Then I fail to see the problem."

"As I said ma'am, she's kept her relationship with the asset purely professional. You've seen in a couple of our reports that we have had a few minor difficulties extracting data from The Intersect when he's overworked. Its no fault on his part - he's just as frustrated by this as we are when this happens - which I feel should be another consideration in his favor - but even those hiccups are always short-lived because Walker has a soothing effect on him. She is able to distract him in a way that allows him to refocus because he is...well..." Casey paused to let the General draw her own conclusions.

"Major," the General said, unable to prevent one corner of her mouth from rising and lips pursing into a tight-lipped smile, "are you trying to say that The Intersect is sweet on Agent Walker?"

"Uh...yes, ma'am. I believe that's as good a way as any to say it. And I think there could be an opportunity for her to...exercise additional influence on him."

Her expression returned to its usual stern one. "Major Casey. In all our years together have I given you any reason to think I am some sort of madam?"

Casey knew he was on unstable ground here. General Beckman had just as much disdain for Graham, his 'specialty agents' and those types of tactics in general as he did. Probably more so. She only asked her female agents to use themselves as bait or distraction in extremely dire circumstances and always with more than ample backup.

"No, ma'am," he replied. "I share your opinion on the practice. But I also think you would agree that some of Graham's girls are generally somewhat...flexible in this area."

"That's grand but why do you think _I_ would be flexible about The Intersect handling any government resource other than a pistol?"

"I'm not suggesting that Walker marry him, ma'am. But they are going to have to at least graduate to sleepovers at some point to keep this cover believable. Soon. I'm not even suggesting a torrid affair. Just more of a we-shouldn't-be-doing-this, no-one-can-know, balancing act kinda thing. He wants to believe it bad enough that he would believe it."

"Has Agent Walker given any indication that she would be receptive to such tactics? And what happens when he becomes less cooperative as the ruse drags on?"

"No, ma'am, it hasn't come up. And, not knowing her position on the matter, I would prefer she not know that I suggested it. But how long will it really be dragging on? He's a pretty simple guy. And she can always hide behind protocol. A little might go a long way."

"I don't know about this Major. It's one thing for an agent to protect her cover with an enemy to avoid detection but the idea of indulging an asset in such a way - especially an asset who is acutely aware that the agent is, in fact, an agent - even if he's not necessarily the one making demands..."

"You're right, of course, ma'am. Perhaps its not the best idea. I have no reason to believe she would indulge the idea either."

"Nor do I, John. As you pointed out the dossier provided was more than a little spotty."

General Beckman paused as she considered the unsavory idea against the importance of maintaining the stream of intelligence insight that The Intersect provided.

"I'll talk to Director Graham. See if I can find out if Agent Walker is the sort who can keep him on a string effectively without taking things too far. Your point about creating an impression of an escalation to their cover relationship is valid at the very least. However, if she's one of his 'specials' - the sort who has zero misgivings about these things - I am NOT comfortable with this idea."

"Perfectly reasonable ma'am," Casey responded and General Beckman disconnected the conference as brusquely as she always did.

Casey swiveled in his chair saying "I'd like to thank The Academy-"

To which Academy he was referring was never clear as he turned directly into a blonde buzz saw.

"I! Do not! Do! That!" Sarah screamed, each enunciation punctuated by a wild but vicious fist or elbow to the general direction of Casey's face which he covered up in a purely defensive position as he laughed which only made her angrier.

"Flexible, my ass!" came accompanied with a punishing elbow. Casey had stopped laughing as, despite the lack of deliberate structure to her attacks, he finally got the message that she did, in fact, intend to hurt him.

She retreated slightly and quickly gathered herself before delivering a crushing downward roundhouse Brazilian kick punctuated with the words "You _asshole_!" that he barely managed to block but that knocked him out of his chair and to the ground.

"Jesus Walker," Casey said as he gathered himself and stood with his palms out facing her but in a fighting stance.

"Graham's girls? Really? Is that what you think of me?" she asked, in a ready stance with both fists clenched.

"You're welcome!" he barked, stopping her angry rant midstream. "Look. I don't know what you might have had to do in your career and I ain't asking. And I'm not saying that if you did more than snuggle up on the couch watching a movie that I even _want_ to know if it's for the job or the guy.

"What I _am_ saying, is we were down to three shots between us yesterday. None of us know which mission is going to be our last. And the sleepover thing is definitely a valid point. It's the most believable way to go. If you don't wanna do any more than that, don't. When..._if_ Graham brings it up, just say you disagree with my assessment. Or _use_ it. For whatever you want to use it for. Least you have the option. And now we got at least the General considering Chuck to be less of a security risk and it wasn't the only thing we discussed so it doesn't stand out as much that we're trying to manipulate any future decisions. So, again, you're welcome."

Sarah had softened her stance as he spoke. "He's a good guy, Casey. I don't want to jerk him around like that. Put him in that position. You could have left that last bit out." Agent Sarah Walker ran a hand through her hair as she sighed deeply.

"Now I have to address it one way or another once Beckman puts the idea in Graham's head or _I'm_ the one not being objective," she sighed, leery of having that discussion with Graham. As she had told her DEA agent friend when she had proposed a similar idea, Graham wouldn't find it believable if she did a full about-face with regard to her position on seductions.

_And AGAIN, you're welcome_, Casey thought as Agent Walker, lost in thought, made for his door and left without another word.

Someone had to push these two idiots. He had noticed when he had first fought her just how unexpectedly young Walker was. He'd be shocked if she were anywhere near thirty years old and thought she could be as young as twenty four. But given the portfolio of work he had gathered on her before putting it away out of courtesy (which had clearly just scratched the surface) her bloody story was a long one. One that would have meant the woman who had just flailed quite dangerously at him for suggesting she'd be up for 'controlling her asset' was likely still a teenager when she joined Graham's little circle of assassins. Because she was definitely one of Graham's 'specials' and, despite this little ruse he had simply paved the way for, he was pretty sure she was not the other kind.

He was under no illusions that, had the Agent rather than the woman beneath attacked him, he wouldn't just be rubbing his forearms where her blows had landed. Which told him a little bit about how accurate his observations of her and Bartowski had been. He would never suggest she run a full blown seduction mission or do anything she didn't want to do but the only person she was fooling was herself.

It would probably blow up in all their faces but the two of them were going to slip up eventually. She was a spy and he trusted her to keep her emotions in check no matter what happened in the darkness of Bartowski's bedroom. At least this way it was less likely to be viewed as a breach in protocol resulting in any reprimands or reassignment and, either way, it was better to find out now. See if it would be a problem or just get it out of her system or whatever.

Sure, if their superiors suspected they were being played they _could_ try to reassign Walker but would they really want to send a new agent and broaden their security risk? Graham wouldn't permit that nor would he want to be cut out entirely. This whole termination thing stunk of Graham. Beckman was at least not unnecessarily brutal. Casey figured he could possibly influence General Beckman and keep his man alive and any strife between Beckman and Graham would make it harder to come to any terminal consensus.

He really was getting soft in his old age. But he liked her. Walker was smart and incredibly skilled and completely unlike the other CIA douchebags he had dealt with in the past. And those were the kind of guys she had likely been involved with since Graham got his claws in her. And he liked the kid too. Otherwise he wouldn't have stuck his neck out with the General and let Walker stay for the conference - offscreen and silent - without tipping the General off that there was another party listening in.

And he wasn't blind. He was no matchmaker - and it really wasn't necessary with these two - but they _had_ all almost died yesterday and both Walker and Bartowski deserved something good in their lives wherever they could find it.

For her part, Sarah Walker slipped out the door into the light. She looked across the courtyard to Chuck's window and wondered when and if Beckman might propose Casey's idea to Graham. Maybe nothing at all would come of it.

But she allowed herself a small smile as she considered the possibilities.

.

* * *

.

CIA Medical Facility, near Annapolis, MD; November 2007

.

"How're you feeling George?"

Professor George Fleming was both surprised and flattered that Director Graham would visit him personally even though they had been acquainted for years. The professor felt that his own research was important and had hoped to deliver a better image compression scheme for the Intersect soon. He wished he had been given some warning so he could have reduced his medication and been better prepared to summarize his accomplishments.

"Like there's a hole in my back, Director," he answered with a grim smile. "But they keep me pretty well drugged up for the pain and keep this arm strapped down so I don't hurt myself. But why did you bring me all the way out here?"

He was lying on his side with the arm he had injured while falling strapped to his side not resting against the mattress.

"Well, you can't go back to Stanford now that your cover is compromised. And we need to debrief on your involvement in the project over these past several years."

"I swear, it was just those few files that I copied. Just the ones for candidates for the subliminal information program. Just my research. I kept their interviews and their recognition tests. Not the other Omaha programs."

They had cast a wide net with those recognition tests, requiring participation under the guise of 'research participation' credits in elective psychology courses. Graham considered that it was kind of the professor to remind him of that broad target pool in many colleges, not just Stanford.

But in his agitated state, the professor had also reminded Director Graham that he was aware of many of the Omaha programs. Knew more than one of his secrets.

"Relax, George," Director Graham soothed in that slick, deep voice of his. "This is a CIA controlled facility so I can speak freely here and, of course, you're now closer to our primary research facility for the Intersect. We found a match recently. Quite by coincidence. He has shown most of the performance we hoped for."

"The Intersect? You got it to work? You found a viable host? Of course! That's why Chuck was there."

Professor Fleming's excitement at that news had caused his pulse to rise so Graham reached out, removed the finger tip oximeter and clipped it to his own index finger where the beeping resumed at a droning sixty beats per minute. Lower than before, when it was on the actual patient's finger, but steady. "Damn it, George. I said relax. We don't want to draw too much attention to my presence here. But, yes. Let's talk for a moment about...Chuck. We have operational security issues to consider."

"Of course. But how is his performance? Is he showing any strains? Is he-"

"I'm sure you have dozens of questions. But I have a few of my own."

At this point, Graham transferred the pillow under Fleming's unsecured hand to his own lap and moved Fleming's arm flat to the bed to allow him to move closer with his large hand remaining circled firmly around the professor's wrist.

"I've reviewed your disk. Interviews and lab sessions for each candidate. Failure after failure."

"Some results were promising! And led to advances in my research-"

"Yes. Of course," Graham smiled. "_Your_ research. But I distinctly remember you telling me that Bartowski's results were invalid?"

"Yes. Yes they were. Agent Larkin found my answer key in his room. I don't know-"

"Relax, George. That's what Larkin told me as well. Fell on his sword. Apologized for being duped and inflating his friend's abilities. I'm just trying to solve a little mystery here. I also remember that you offered up an alternate candidate late in the process that semester. Unremarkable but later than the others. Do you recall that?"

"Uhh...yes?"

"I thought so. And the disk we recovered. Those were the original files?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I know it's not-"

Graham raised his hand to silence the other man. "You and I are the only ones who knew that. Which is why, when whoever _copied_ the disk did so, they followed the pattern of every other semester and backdated all files so that Thompson's file - your replacement test subject - was dated before he was considered. I know that you filed his entry in a folder created when Bartowski's was created but the files themselves came later. It also made me wonder where Bartowski's files were."

"They weren't on the disk?"

Graham slowly shook his head from side to side. "No, George. It seems that someone I trusted hasn't been entirely truthful. Thank you for helping me get to the bottom of it."

Graham almost laughed at George Fleming's relief when the professor offered "Of course. I'm happy to help." Did the fool really think he had to _see_ the files that had been removed in order to know what he had done?

"Good," Graham smiled again and leaned in closer. "Because what I'm most curious about...Professor...is why you, upon seeing Chuck Bartowski again and being informed that a suitable Intersect host had been discovered, naturally assumed that the two were one and the same?"

Professor Fleming's eyes widened as the Director - but former agent - leapt into motion, pulling the restraint he had casually positioned under the other man's previously unrestrained arm taut and using his other hand to muffle his cries for help with the pillow.

"But it occurs to me now that Larkin knew those results _were_ valid. As did you. You may have set my project back _years_, George. And I'll deal with everyone else involved in this little scheme when the time comes."

Graham leaned his superior body weight into the frailer man's torso as Fleming kicked and thrashed fruitlessly and Graham continued in that same soothing tone. "Relax, George. No one is coming. I've cleared the floor. This is a CIA controlled facility. And, no thanks to you, I control the CIA."

As Graham pressed and held the pillow down over the injured mans face the pulse reading never exceeded seventy-five beats per minute and mostly hovered at a steady sixty. There would be no autopsy and all records would indicate that Professor Fleming succumbed to his wounds despite his corpse being misplaced and accidentally cremated.

Director Graham restored the oximeter to the dead man's finger and he left to call his cleaners.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; several days later

.

Scooter was dropping off deposits and shouldn't be back for a few minutes but Sarah had pulled Chuck into the supply closet just in case. Chuck was particularly concerned about this upcoming double date, almost comically so, and she needed to talk him down a bit.

"Let's go over it again. Make sure we have our bases covered."

"God, who'd thought going out to sushi with my sister and her boyfriend would make me so freaked?"

"Okay. Last night we saw a movie."

"What was my snack of choice?"

"Sprinkled milk duds over your popcorn," which she hated. She didn't like little surprises in her popcorn but Chuck was apparently a snack food multitasker. "What was I wearing?" she asked.

"Blue top, little buttons."

"Oh, you like that one?" She was surprised at the quickness of her own response and realized her part of their rapid fire exchange may have revealed that she did like it when he noticed her.

"I like all of 'em," he replied without hesitation. Melting her a little at the implication that he was less impressed by the clothes and more the woman wearing them but he obliviously plowed on relentlessly in their preparation. "What movie were we-"

"Why is this door locked?" came the question from her manager on the other side of the door.

"What are you doing?" Chuck asked as she launched into her favorite quick-cover move with Chuck despite the close quarters of the supply closet. Popping several buttons on her blouse open as she took him down to the ground, straddling his hips and kissing him hard, tongue plundering his mouth for these stolen few seconds, while an observer who must remain convinced of their cover fumbled with the lock.

"Wow. Girl on top," the joyless manager observed flatly before a half-hearted reprimand "Ms. Walker. When Herr Wienerlicious signs your paycheck, I doubt he's factoring in make-out breaks with your boy-toy."

It was completely unnecessary. Or at least more than a little excessive. And she calmed her breathing as she rebuttoned her blouse, secretly pleased to see Chuck frozen completely beneath her, watching intently as her hands worked and she apologized.

"I'm sorry. I had to act fast."

She ground against him more than was strictly necessary when she dismounted him.

She wasn't sorry at all.

.

* * *

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; that night

.

Sarah had been pacing her room in nothing but a red lace demi bra and matching bikini panties. She was considering wearing the blue top Chuck had mentioned but didn't want it to look like she was deliberately wearing the top he had described. Now there was a dark juniper-green top with cute little puff sleeves and a scoop neck that she was considering.

She hadn't gotten dressed yet because she had initially thought a glimpse of the red under the dark blue would be especially dramatic - even if it was a look stolen from the woman they both now knew as Carina - but she was now considering changing underwear so the scoop neck and green over red didn't make her feel like a Christmas display.

Why did she wear such girly things every time she had a cover date with Chuck? Why did she even have so many lacy things? How had she accumulated so many undergarments that she associated with missions that terrified her to think a mark might get her in a position to see them?

She had briefly worn such things before for - recreational purposes - but found she was still terrified of the idea of revealing what she wore beneath her outer clothes to her boyfriend. Just a very different kind of terrified.

She changed into a less elegant black set of a similar cut and was evaluating herself over her shoulder in the mirror, thinking that she didn't look too terribly scrawny or overly muscly - seeing in her mirror image only the things she had been teased about or reprimanded for in the past rather than the reality of the woman reflected there - when her phone rang.

She smiled thinking it might be Chuck. She should really take his advice about ring tones because when she saw the blocked number she had to quickly put her game face on before answering.

"Walker, secure," she said, knowing the only person it could possibly be.

"Graham, secure. Hello, Sarah," he greeted then paused. Usually Graham launched right into whatever it was he wanted to say.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"This morning I had an interesting conversation with Diane Beckman at the NSA," having watched Casey interact with the General, Sarah realized just how disrespectful it was that he did not refer to the General by her rank. Especially when the General always referred to Graham as 'Director'.

"It seems her All-American robot," he continued, "has made some operational suggestions. Firstly, that Bartowski be trained to handle a firearm."

Sarah was not supposed to have been present for that conversation so she replied accordingly "Why, sir? I mean, that's what I'm here for. Me and Casey. To protect the Intersect."

"Yes, but Mr. Bartowski's thought was that he may be required to take extreme measures if he were to fall into enemy hands."

Sarah allowed herself a small smile since Graham could not see her as she played along. "That's a disturbing thought, sir. But at least he's aware of the risk he poses."

"Yes, that was Beckman's thought as well. And you know as well as I that he would have to be terminated rather than be lost to us."

"Of course, sir. That's asset protection 101." And it sickened her to say it. That 'protection' had next to nothing to do with the person but rather with the information or skills they possessed.

Chuck had asked to learn to use a gun in case a situation arose where Casey couldn't kill him rather than be taken. She would prefer to think they could track him down and retrieve him but it was the one situation where she could possibly forgive Casey - or even Chuck - for doing the worst. No one had asked her whether she could do the same. Including her.

"Good. I'm glad I have my best agent on the job in case that is necessary. Your itinerary indicated cover maintenance activities this evening."

For now, that would have to do. Limiting the consideration of terminating Chuck only if he were in danger of being taken. Irretrievably, she amended to herself. Graham had changed gears allowing for no further discussion of the topic.

Her itinerary consisted of text messages sent to a non-existent 'girlfriend' named Betty but, yes, she had sent that text that kept Graham apprised of her movements.

"Yes sir, Director. Chuck's sister and her boyfriend are available this evening and asked us to join them for dinner."

"That's become a fairly common occurrence." Sarah heard the question in the statement.

"Well, sir. That's the split Casey and I have. He watches him at work and I watch him, as much as believable, outside of work."

"Any issues with that arrangement?"

"No, sir. Other than our respective over zealous managers in our cover jobs. Nothing we can't handle," she thought it best to be transparent about the latest happenings since Graham always seemed to know everything anyway. "I just had to reinforce our cover a bit today when Scooter interrupted our planning. Casey is flirting with some long standing sales record for appliances and his manager seems more interested in giving Chuck a hard time than Casey."

"So, Scott Kerney and Mike Tucker. Do we need to make any changes there?"

"Not Big Mike sir, Chuck's been managing _him_ for years without him realizing. Harry Tang is the one constantly monitoring Chuck's comings and goings. Scooter can tend to be a bit of a nuisance especially if I need to get away quickly but it hasn't been terribly problematic."

Of course, Langston Graham knew exactly who Sarah had been speaking about. The corn dog joint was his agent's cover and he had it wired to his specifications. He actually had the surveillance footage for the Weinerlicious available to him remotely - not that he had time to monitor it regularly or trusted anyone else to do so - and was currently staring at a screen frozen at the point when 'Scooter' had discovered Agent Walker and the Intersect in the supply closet.

He couldn't fully see around the manager and his unusual hair but could tell that Walker was on top of the Intersect who was lying on the floor. Such a move to secure their cover was not unheard of but it did leave him with the question of what they were doing in the supply closet in the first place. Why she was so concerned about a non-operational aspect of the mission since the only planning going on was for a cover date.

Larkin and Fleming conspired to hide Bartowski's abilities after Larkin had talked him up as a potential field analyst. Walker or Casey hid the truth of Chuck's candidacy while at Stanford. Beckman passed along a request from her personal attack dog to have Walker escalate her cover as Bartowski's girlfriend.

Just who the fuck was this Bartowski? He should have been a research subject for Project Omaha years ago. If he was capable of hosting the Intersect now, whatever had been hidden from him years ago would have prompted him to have Bartowski disappeared and strapped into a download chair until they perfected the process. What was it about him that inspired such loyalty and sacrifice and potentially compromised his best agent?

And just how stupid did they think he was?

"Very well. Let me know if Mr. Kerney's micromanagement becomes problematic," he continued, fully intending to make some changes that would make such rendezvous unnecessary in the future. "Diane also made a suggestion that you and Mr. Bartowski may need to escalate your cover in some way. Perhaps use any attraction he has to you to help smooth out his performance. Do you concur?"

Sarah steeled herself for the performance of her career against the man who knew everything. "No sir, it's not necessary. Chuck is a knowing participant. Any physical contact has been purely for the benefit of secondary targets observing us together."

"General Beckman indicated that there may be an opportunity to further infiltrate his life. That his...participation...may not be as objective as yours."

"I don't know why she would say that sir."

"Casey. Casey apparently observed the asset in his interactions with you and believes that to be the case. Is Bartowski getting...frustrated with your cover arrangement?"

"I...suppose it's possible, sir," she began deliberately haltingly, as though it were the first time she had considered it and did what Casey had done. Spun a believable yarn that painted Chuck in a slightly unfavorable light to get what they wanted.

"He _is_ a man with a pulse. And I did mention to Casey that after almost two months it may raise suspicions that neither he nor I have spent the night with one another. Ellie's boyfriend has commented on it. But both of them are often working overnight shifts so we could imply that we were intimate when neither of them were home. Maybe just be present when one of them comes home from a long shift early in the morning."

"I know your general position on this kind of thing but what about Bartowski himself?"

"What about him, sir?"

"Would it give us more or less control over him if you were to escalate the nature of your cover?"

"Sir? What benefit would that provide?" she tried to straddle the line between indignation and refusal. "He already knows I'm an agent and knows our relationship is purely to maintain access to him and the intel in the Intersect."

"Well then, I agree that the two of you will likely need to step up your game after two months of supposed dating. Tell Bartowski you'll have to spend the night and be seen coming and going. Consider whether we can achieve even more consistent performance from the Intersect by drawing Mr. Bartowski further under your influence. Keep me apprised and the rest - whether you can find a suitable balance between control and working a cover - I leave to your discretion."

"Yes sir," Sarah smiled as Graham disconnected knowing thinking she may have played along sufficiently for this to have some chance of working.

Graham smiled knowing that, if his most reluctant seductress took this step, there was much, much more to the story.

He would play along with this proposal and hide behind it if anyone later suggested his agent was compromised to keep her in place. If something were developing between the two of them then he could use one against the other. Drive both Bartowski's cooperation and Walker's compliance. He found it hard to believe, and the next few days would be very telling, but rather than being the problem most considered it to be it may provide him even more ways to manipulate the situation to his advantage.

.

* * *

.

057: Misgivings

.

Kyoto Sushi, Burbank, CA; later that night

.

It was strange.

Chuck had still been reeling from the kiss Sarah had laid on him earlier this afternoon. He hadn't even realized he was flirting - possibly flirting - _accidentally_ flirting - with the tiny little deli owner today when she had come to the Buy More desperately looking for a phone repair until Morgan had accused him of being a mind cheater.

And said something non-sensical about licorice and chewing on hair.

And Chuck had actually felt terribly guilty about being too-nice to an attractive customer because he was currently not-dating a beautiful, funny, smart, kick-ass spy assigned to protect him.

It made him think back to not quite two months ago when Sarah had come in for the same reason. Or so he had thought. He wondered if he had been flirting with women for years just thinking he was being nice and not realized it for some reason. Whether any of them had been interested or receptive and he hadn't picked up on it. Whether he hadn't picked up on any interest from the women Ellie had tried to set him up with.

When the force of nature that was Sarah Walker walked in - and came back - it changed everything. Made him look at everything differently. Made him question everything.

But it also put into sharp relief the fact that there was a real world out there that he was never going to be a part of again. That the woman sitting next to him laughing at stories about ratty old sweaters and enduring Devon's inappropriate but supposedly well-intentioned advice - the one who seemed too good to be true...

Was.

His life had changed when she walked through that door. And not just because she met him at a very strange time in his life. And now he was thinking in movie lines again. But he reasoned his life didn't seem to hold many more possibilities than that movie character right now.

Two months ago he had possibilities and had no inclination to seize them. Now he had no ability to do so but he had Sarah. And as she glanced back at him and smiled that adorably perfect smile at him he still wasn't sure that was any kind of raw deal.

The corners of her mouth faltered as she saw something in his expression that only she could see. Something questioning encroaching into her smile - likely in response to his half-hearted smile in return to hers. She was perceptive. But he supposed she wouldn't have lasted this long if she wasn't. No one here would try to harm her in any way if she failed to convincingly play the part of girlfriend. He wondered how she had managed to survive when the people around her - including those unknowingly only _playing_ the role of boyfriend - were not nearly as inclined to be friendly.

He had successfully placed her sushi order and they had exchanged endearments in a way that convinced his equally perceptive sister that side-stepping her boyfriend's sex questions was just modesty or possibly actual old-fashioned values. Thoughts about what Sarah may have endured in her career and what that may have done to her willingness and ability to accept real affection and caring from others only made him want to show her how loved she could be. All the while, he hid not only that their relationship was a complete fabrication from their dinner companions but also, from her, that although it was just a cover for her he absolutely burned for her.

As she reached out, grabbed his hand and locked eyes with him, somehow offering her immense strength and reassurance to him, he saw a glimpse of the real her again and wondered just how much real affection of what kind there was underneath all the rest.

If there was any truth under all the lies.

Recent events had caused him to face a lot of truths and he had always been an apt pupil. They both painted on their best smiles and rejoined the conversation.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; two days later

.

Sarah watched Chuck cross the parking lot and head back to work. She hadn't meant to let all those innuendoes slip out of her mouth - or maybe she had. God knows where her head was at these days. Or where Chuck's was.

Two days ago, on their sushi date, she had felt unusually awkward about holding him close as they left the restaurant - his hand sliding just slightly up the back of her jacket to avoid going too low - before Mason Whitney had crashed in under the effects of Pentothol poisoning. There had been something in Chuck's eyes that told her that he wasn't entirely comfortable trying to convince his sister that their relationship were real. Or perhaps, more optimistically, that he wished it was real.

She was surprised to find she felt the same way. She had watched Ellie and Devon and their natural affection for one another all night and felt pangs of jealousy that they didn't have to be as guarded as she did.

When they returned to his apartment to wait for Ellie she had watched Chuck's face as Devon made his horrible analogies and she resisted the urge to smack him in the back of the head. Honestly, she knew he was just trying to bolster Chuck's confidence - and Devon was unknowingly supporting her own plan - but, really, was she meant to be the fucking bicycle in this analogy?

And she was thrown enough by Devon's poor wording that she hadn't meant to say it quite the way she did when she suggested to Chuck that they spend the night together.

That it was time for them to 'make love'.

She would have laughed at him choking on his coffee if she hadn't felt exactly the same way. She had never used that phrase in her life. But neither had she used the phrase 'existential spy crisis' when scrambling for a way to talk him down from the idea that he had somehow endangered Ellie or that he was becoming too comfortable with all of the lying they were doing.

Clearly it was the lying that was bothering him. And why wouldn't it? Asking such a thing of such an inherently honest guy? So she went on to explain that she would just be spending the night. That it was no big deal to be sharing a bed and tried not to over correct when he said 'got it - no touching'.

Because, honestly, a little touching would be more than fine.

Yesterday, when she came to collect him for their field trip to the morgue any thoughts of bringing it up were put off by what happened at the Buy More. She hadn't realized what she was interrupting at the Nerd Herd desk until she saw the other woman's reaction.

She was pretty - if tiny. Half a foot or more shorter than her, Sarah might have been almost a foot taller than her if she hadn't been wearing comfortable shoes for the trip to the morgue. But she had never felt so threatened by someone so completely physically unimposing.

Every emotion that Sarah had stifled in the past two months was completely transparent on the smaller brunette's face. Once he followed Sarah outside, Chuck swore she had just brought him a sandwich to thank him for fixing her phone. Defending himself, technically unnecessarily, even as he himself wondered whether he might be the one who hadn't fully understood his initial interaction with the tiny, feisty brunette.

And today, there she was in the parking lot. Just a normal pretty girl whose phone Chuck had fixed. Exactly what Sarah had once pretended to be.

Scooter opened the door to say the cash till was secure and they were open for business and Sarah wondered - as Chuck stopped to talk to the much smaller woman - even as he, unknown to Sarah, confessed to Lou that (even though he was at a loss as to how it had happened) maybe their signals hadn't gotten crossed after all - if she had waited too long to suggest they push the limits of their cover arrangement.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Lake, CA; that night

.

Sarah had seen the light on in Chuck's room and motion in the living room and, as the nerves threatened to close her throat or launch her heart completely out of her chest, she avoided the doorbell and lightly knocked on the door.

Maybe no one would answer. This was such a bad idea. And she felt so stupid standing here in a silk robe made to look like a trench coat and very little on underneath. She was on the verge of running back to her car when the door opened.

"Sarah? I thought I heard something. Why didn't you just ring the...Wowza!"

It had taken Ellie a second to process the differences in Sarah. "Well, you look like a woman who knows what she wants," Ellie smirked and Sarah felt the heat rise in her cheeks.

Why was this so terrifying? She and Chuck weren't actually going to have sex tonight.

Probably.

No, definitely not tonight. Although who knew what might happen with relaxed rules and close proximity under cover of darkness. At least they'd likely slip into some degree of intimate contact and she'd get to stay the night with him. That was really all she had been hoping for. The rest they could discuss, or better yet maybe just naturally ease into, but the thought of every possibility was now paralyzing her with fear.

"I love your hair," Ellie observed of the soft ringlets Sarah had spent an hour off and on getting just right as she somewhat surprisingly reached out and lifted a few of her curls and let them bounce back down into place.

Sarah heard herself ask "Do you think he'll like it?" wanting to kick herself for sounding so needy and wondering if she would be able to get her nerves under control.

"Are you kidding?" Ellie goggled at her. "You look hot. Like, really hot. Like, hot for _you_, hot. And you have seen _his_ hair, right? Or maybe you like having something to grab hold of," Sarah's jaw dropped at that as Ellie powered on. "And if my guess is right about what's _not_ under that - oh, that's not a trench coat - I like it. Are you cold?"

Sarah just realized she was hugging herself and relaxed her arms even as Ellie manically changed topics and switched from acting like a conspiring girlfriend to a concerned mother as she continued.

"You know, you shouldn't let Devon's ribbing influence you if you guys want to take things slow. Chuck is mad about you and waiting until you're ready isn't going to put him off as long as he knows where he stands with you. He'll wait for you forever. He's that far gone. Why are you so worried anyway? It can't be your first time. Wait, can it?"

"In some ways it is," Sarah answered quietly.

God, had she just said that? It was true on so many levels. First time she deliberately did something remotely like this for an assignment. Yet it wasn't an assignment. It was something under the guise of an assignment. She hoped Chuck could take her lead and understand that. But more importantly, it was something she really, really wanted to work that might be more meaningful than a little fling or blowing off steam and that was unfamiliar territory. Her first time with someone she knew cared about more than her body or her proficiency as a partner or even both. Who cared about _her_.

She looked up to see Ellie beaming at her, clearly reading some of what she had actually been thinking into what she had said.

"Well, if my little brother is anything less than gentleman I'll be very disappointed in him. Now get in there Tiger and just... Be good to each other," Ellie sing-songed as she headed down the hall and slipped past Chuck's open door.

.

* * *

.

058: Pillow Talk

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Chuck's Bedroom, Echo Lake, CA; that night

.

Sarah took a deep breath and stood still for a moment or two trying to process all of the input she had just absorbed from Ellie. She strategically left her overnight bag next to the couch where it would be noticed and hopefully become a common sight. She had only packed lounge wear like a little grey tunic top and workout clothes but didn't think she would bother with a morning run tomorrow. Hopefully mornings lounging around with Chuck and his family could be common occurrences one day soon too and - showering logistics aside - she was looking forward to that as much as whatever happened tonight.

Tonight. Right. She focused on calming her nerves before walking slowly down the hall. She peeked around Chuck's door and was instantly at ease when she caught Chuck dancing erratically in an adorably dorky display until he turned and locked eyes with her and started at her presence.

"Ellie let me in," she explained in a smooth tone that she was surprised she could manage. "Wow, Chuck," she said as she took in the room, "What do you think is going to happen here tonight?"

"Why? What do you... what do you think I think?" It was good to see that he was as nervous as she felt.

"What do you think I think you think," she teased with a smile before realizing just how nervous Chuck was. "I don't know, the... the candles and the music..." He had either made a great effort to keep up the act or secretly held some of the same hopes that she did.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know we're just spending the night together for the cover. I...why...why would I possibly think anything else? By now I'd say I'm pretty familiar with the concept of faking it, so...

"Well, I'm glad you're taking this assignment seriously."

"Okay, I'll lose the music."

Sarah reached out and touched his forearm to stop him "No, that's OK. That's not what I..." she paused and sighed a little and listened as Chuck stood there with her hand on his arm. "What's this one?" she asked.

"It's the Isley Brothers. An oldie. Told ya I was going to transfer some vinyl stuff."

"It's nice. Leave it on," she said as she let her hand slide up his arm a bit - reassuringly, she hoped - before turning to slip off her ballet flats as Chuck rounded to the far side of the bed.

"OK. You can change in the bathroom," Chuck said as he flopped back against his pillow.

"That's okay," she replied and she took a deep breath and let the robe fall from her shoulders. It was a relatively modest nightie - a purple mid-thigh, spaghetti-strap baby doll that was very lacy and low cut but, honestly, she had worn more revealing clothes out clubbing. She wanted something that didn't scream sexy but at least implied it and that she looked pretty in. When Chuck looked up at her apparently it wasn't modest enough.

"What? All I did was light some candles and you come in wearing that?"

"What, this? This..." she had hoped for mildly jaw-dropping not mild hostility and she leaned on what she knew. The mission. "...this is part of my cover."

"Well, it doesn't _cover_ a thing."

"Chuck, what if Ellie or Awesome were to walk in? This is exactly what a girlfriend would wear to seduce her boyfriend," she reasoned.

"I guess. It's just..." Chuck closed his eyes for just a second before opening them again, glancing at her from the legs up and noting the different, softer hairstyle. "You look... You look really nice, Sarah."

"Thank you. I am just being professional," she said matter-of-factly as she turned down the covers on her side of the bed.

Chuck smirked, opened his mouth and started "World's-" but Sarah raised a finger "Don't! You dare say it." She would be offended if she didn't know it was a defense mechanism. And maybe she still was a little offended.

"Sorry. Sorry for even thinking it. When'd you start reading my mind anyway?"

"Last Tuesday. It was in my report," she joked as she turned off the lights leaving them bathed in candlelight and she slid into bed facing him propped up on one elbow.

Chuck shifted to mirror her pose, facing her. "So... You're here to seduce your boyfriend?"

"So it seems," she smiled, "we can just lay here a while, if that's OK, and blow out the candles before we go to sleep?"

Chuck seemed to consider and accept that before asking "So what are the rules here? Imaginary wall? Spooning? No spooning? Who's the big spoon?"

"Umm...what's spooning mean?"

"You... Really? Like how spoons fit together. In the drawer. You know, the big spoon is the one behind the other..."

"Oh. Wouldn't spoons that fit together have to be the same size?"

"I... Never thought of that."

Chuck narrowed his eyes at her - studying her the way he did when they had these exchanges. She loved it and hated it. He could see through her so easily and, as much as she trusted him, she wasn't ready for that.

"I guess spooning is okay," she offered, "You're the big spoon."

"Damn straight."

She chuckled at that and the slight puffing up of his chest Chuck had attempted as she shifted to lay facing away from him. It was terrifying. Turning her back on someone. On anyone.

Then she felt his arm slide under her pillow and felt the warmth of his body shift to press up against hers. His other hand grazed over the top of her head and smoothed out her hair, minimizing the stray hairs that would tickle his face. He breathed in her hair before tilting his head upward - she could feel the point of his chin on the top of her head - and he couldn't seem to figure out where to place his other hand. It rested briefly on her hip then flat against the mattress in front of her before he moved to shift again so she took it in her own and gently laid it firmly against her stomach. She hoped he didn't notice that her heart was racing.

His fingertips played with the texture of the material for a moment or two before he splayed out his fingers and let the warmth of his hand lie against the smooth firmness of her stomach. She had initially considered burning off all of her nervous energy, starting with grinding against him until her intentions were crystal clear but this was so incredibly comfortable. He was so incredibly comfortable. She had never done this with anyone - lover or friend - it had felt too dangerous. It made her feel vulnerable. Defenseless. But with him it felt right.

There would be time enough later for talk of escalating their cover. She was content with just this and, maybe once this had become a habit, she could encourage his hands to wander a bit and see where that took them. She could sell it as anything she chose if she took it slowly enough. She was surprised to find that, as much as she wanted more, she was pretty comfortable with slowly for once in her life.

She was so warm and comfortable that she had nearly dozed off when Chuck sighed quietly but deeply.

"You okay?" she muttered sleepily.

"Thought you were sleeping," he whispered.

"Almost. I'm cozy. But that's OK. Is there anything you want to talk about?"

"What exactly are the rules with our, like, you know, our, our thing?"

"What do you mean?" she asked still with her back to him as she let her fingers lace with those of his hand and held them both out in front of her as she examined the perfect fit.

"What do I... What do I mean? I mean, hypothetically speaking, are we allowed to see other people?"

Sarah let his hand go at that and slid it under her pillow before answering without turning. "Well, uh... Our cover is boyfriend/girlfriend so, tactically, that would be challenging."

"So you just have to pretend we're together all the time and not actually date anyone that you want to?"

Her? That was unexpected.

"Its uhh... Part of the job," she answered. "I don't get to do anything that compromises our cover. What about you?"

"What? Am I even _allowed_ to see other people?"

She considered blatantly lying but settled on throwing a little cold water on the idea. "It would be discouraged. Plus any prospective date would have to endure a rigorous vetting process to determine her motivation."

"Wouldn't her motivation be love?" _Whoa. Rein that in cowboy. Let's cope with what 'like' means first._

"Ideally, but you're a very important piece of intelligence, and you have to be handled with extreme care."

"Well, that sounds very nice," he said as he withdrew his hand and remained quiet for a moment before continuing. "Is that what's going on here? Being handled?"

No, no, no, no. _That's_ what he was leading into? Sarah turned her body slightly and whipped her head around to look back at him. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Well, would your bosses be pissed or happy if something happened here tonight? Or any night?"

"Maybe it doesn't have to be about what my boss thinks?" The veiled offer seemed feeble in the light of the spotlight he was apparently turning on this situation.

"You just said you can't pursue anything outside of your cover so it matters what they think. Whether they think it strengthens or weakens the cover. Their control over the situation."

Chuck had trapped her with logic again so she deflected.

"Chuck, I don't have to be a spy to piece together the clues here. You're interested in that Lou girl, aren't you?"

"Well, I...yes. No...I mean..." Chuck took a deep breath and paused again. It was about her but not in the way Sarah thought. "OK, so she comes in with a broken phone and I try to talk her down and she seems to think I'm funny or something and I didn't realize it until she was walking away how much it was like something that happened to me a couple of months ago, right? Except...except this time it was real instead of something I just thought was real. That's what I'm interested in. What's real. And what's not real."

Sarah was quiet at that and he wondered why. He really didn't want to know the answer to the questions in his mind. He thought there was a slim chance Sarah had come over tonight for more than a G-rated sleepover. He ghosted his hand over her ribs and felt her breath hitch slightly. Slid his hand down the outside of her thigh, the tip of one finger tracing the hem of her nightie and the bare skin beneath, and felt the hidden power there as her muscles twitched and then relaxed.

He couldn't imagine allowing himself to do anything beyond the way he was currently holding her without those answers. It wouldn't be fair to him and it wouldn't be fair to her.

He withdrew his hand and placed it on her shoulder before asking "What's the typical way an agent is sent to influence a potential asset?"

Oh God, he chose tonight to ask this? Of course if he had puzzled out asset protection and termination protocols he had also given some thought to cover relationships and manipulation. She paused and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of him enveloping her from behind and memorizing the sensation. It was a fair question. And the least she could do was answer as honestly as she dared.

"I suppose you send someone to befriend them. Get close to them. Learn their likes and dislikes."

Chuck wasn't fooled by her carefully worded effort to keep gender out of it. "What if the asset is a man and the agent is a woman?"

Sarah closed her eyes tighter. "Well, same thing. But she could entice him into dating her."

"And how long would that go on?"

"As long as necessary," she breathed softly.

"And once he realized she was an agent?" he asked just as softly.

"Well, then the jig is up. Or..." she paused with the last hope for making him understand.

"Or?"

"Or she goes on dating him; convinces him it's real and her bosses that it's not."

It was another attempt to convey to him the possible ways around their rules but she couldn't see behind her and that was the moment when Chuck closed his eyes in defeat as he asked "But he would never know - never _really_ know - whether it was real or not. I mean, no matter how much he _wanted_ it to be true, right? How could he?"

"Only if he trusted...her," she had nearly said 'me'. Only if he trusted _me_.

They were both quiet for a while, the indistinct noise of Ellie and Awesome arguing mumbling through the walls, before Chuck quietly observed "That's not like them."

Then a long simmering thought found its way to the front of his mind. A possible way to explain his position to Sarah and give her another chance to say something. Anything that would make her intentions clearer.

"Do you know what a roller pigeon is?"

"Birds on skates?" she smiled into the dimness of the candlelit room, still lying with her back to him.

She felt the delightful sensation of his short burst of laughter rumbling through his chest and through her back. "See? Funny."

"Maybe I am." _Or maybe I choose the worst times for it_, she thought before answering more seriously. "But yeah, roller pigeons. They're the ones that tumble in the air, right?"

Of course she knew that. "Right. They tumble. And my knowledge of this is based on movies so..."

"Of course it is."

"Shush. Anyway, supposedly there's shallow rollers and deep rollers. Shallow rollers just tumble a bit. Deep rollers dive and tumble until you're sure they're going to smash themselves against the ground. I often wonder if my parents - whatever drove them to leave - if they were the human equivalent of deep rollers. Because supposedly you can't breed two deep rollers together because their offspring will grow up and one day they'll roll and roll and roll - all the way down until they do hit the ground. Ellie's a deep roller. She'll kill or die for the people she loves. And I'm starting to realize, so am I. That's why I have to know. I have to know what's real and what's not."

He had practically whispered it to her. And she had been lulled into the story he was telling about himself. He had to know. Before he invested his heart in something.

"You know," she hesitantly offered in an attempt at levity "some guys would just consider it a perk."

There was another long pause before he answered from the back of her neck in a very serious tone. "I hope you never feel like you have to settle for a man who considers you a perk. Or anything less than what you are, for that matter."

"What am I?" she asked quietly.

He paused for what seemed a long, long time before answering. "Amazing."

They just lay there quietly for a long time spooned together. Both lost in thought, him perfectly still and her picking at imaginary lint on the sheet in front of her, until he asked something she hadn't considered he might think about tonight's 'mission'.

"Is this what you meant? About doing things you'd rather not do?"

Her hand froze against the sheet at that. She wasn't prepared to clear the air - the truth wasn't very pretty although not in the way his question implied - and in the absence of truth he had no choice but to make assumptions. There's just no good way to answer.

That it doesn't happen is just a blatant lie and now he knows it. She just explained how it sometimes works but he already knew. The hypothetical she gave was far less likely than an agent just using her influence to get what she was after but it did happen.

What was she supposed to say? _'But that's not how it is with you and me'_? His first question would be _'How is it between you and me?'_ And then he was supposed to just believe her?

Or he might ask if she had ever done such a thing before. And she had. She had lulled men into traps, sometimes to divert their attention and sometimes to kill them. She had cozied up to horrible men and endured their pawing and their mouths on hers and feigned her own enthusiasm to get what she needed. And they were all fools because they hadn't asked the questions Chuck was asking. They had believed what they wanted to believe and paid dearly.

Or would he ask if she had ever done the thing she had sworn never to do? Something that wasn't even all that common, at least among actual agents. And she really didn't want to say that she had foolishly managed to avoid that entirely - not knowing at the time that it was a rare situation usually reserved for Graham's specials - by becoming one of the most prolific assassins in the world.

Didn't want to clarify that she would rather - that she _has_ \- slit the throats of every man in a building than let her target use her like that... she honestly can't decide if that's better or worse.

Didn't want to offer that she's been lucky enough that she's never encountered a situation she deemed important enough to debase herself in that specific way. That just seemed to her like the old Churchill joke about haggling over price.

Then she realized - that without offering that clarification - he would justifiably assume she had done what she had sworn to never do. And if she had ever actually had sex with someone on the job was that really worse than her bloody career as Graham's Enforcer?

No one to her knowledge had ever quite worked out the perfect ratio between murder and seduction that somehow wouldn't exceed the combined understanding and compassion of a good man. If there were such a thing maybe she wouldn't have steered so hard in the other direction.

As she fully realized exactly what he must be thinking that she may have done at some point in her career - or many points - and started up into a sitting position to somehow refute his apparent assumptions at almost the exact instant that Ellie burst in and flipped the light switch on.

His sister was rambling, saying she had known Chuck since the day he was born and talking about funny animal shapes and the size of Sarah's breasts and piggy banks and fanny packs and saying that words tasted like peaches.

Sarah suddenly realized that she had been too preoccupied with her own problems to recognize the signs half an hour ago. She didn't need Casey's later confirmation to know that Chuck's sister had been poisoned with the same lethal Pentothal derivative as Mason Whitney.

.

* * *

.

059: Deathbed Confessions

.

Westside Medical Hospital, Burbank, CA; the next day

.

Devon had left to find a hematologist in another wing since everyone else they knew had exhausted their medical knowledge. Everyone here had gone all out to help one of their own and were working their own contacts to find an answer. Casey was off setting up the final details of their ambush and Sarah had come back to check on Chuck and Ellie.

Trading nuclear codes for one woman's life. Casey had been right. It just wasn't done.

Yet she hadn't tried to interfere when Chuck had snatched the bug from Casey, basically said "Come and get me" and put this plan in motion. She just watched Chuck stand up to Casey and Casey being impressed by Chuck's resourcefulness. Again.

She stood in the corner of the room - just out of the view of either passersby or the room's occupants like the the ghost she was - watching a remarkable man watch his unconscious, equally remarkable sister slowly die.

"Chuck, you've haven't left this room since we got here." Sarah stepped forward and reached out toward him but jerked her hand back before she made contact with his shoulder. It shouldn't be this hard. No matter how confused things were becoming between them she should be able to reassure him. Or console him. Or whatever he needed. She sighed and tried again and this time was able to place her hand on his shoulder.

She smiled as he looked up at her from Ellie's bedside – not to reassure him although it did have that effect – but because she was relieved that she was able to snap him out of his trance. He smiled weakly back and it saddened her that it wasn't his usual earth-shattering variety.

She hooked her hand lightly under his arm and urged him out of his chair. She wanted to embrace him but thought better of it and was a little embarrassed that the thought had even entered her mind that she was here with him and the apparent rival for his affections was not.

No matter how much she wanted to undercut the little sandwich girl, it wasn't about what she wanted right now or even what he wanted. It was about what he needed. And what he didn't need was more mixed messages from her. "Why don't you walk around a bit and get a cup of coffee. I'll stay right here with her. I promise."

"I've noticed maybe spies making promises isn't the best idea."

It was hard to be offended over the truth. She used to have these rules. And not just once she became a spy.

Don't make promises. Don't get attached to anything you can lose - which meant anyone or anything and later became simply don't get attached. Don't give anyone power over you. They were the rules she lived by. Literally. The rules that kept her alive.

In a few short weeks he had made her break them all.

She moved her hand from over his shoulder to over his heart and felt the heat that constantly emanated from him. She didn't refute what he had said about promises – just kept her hand squarely on his chest, met his stare, smiled and repeated herself softly.

"I promise."

"Don't you have to get ready for our mystery guest?"

"I've got time. Take ten minutes. Please. You'll make me feel better for what I have to do." She pushed him softly backward toward the door and he smiled back before he turned to leave. It wasn't the full power one she was almost powerless against but it was as close as she had any right to expect under the circumstances.

She assumed Chuck's post in the chair by Ellie's bed and hugged one knee to her chest and watched the door waiting for Chuck to return. After a couple of minutes she looked back to Ellie by all appearances resting peacefully but slowly dying.

The woman who was as much a mother to Chuck as a sister and who wanted nothing more than for him to find love and purpose in his life. The woman who was so excited that Sarah and Chuck were dating and had no idea what a hero her brother truly was.

Sarah shifted in her seat to face the bed with her elbows on her knees. She reached out and took Ellie's hand in hers and wondered if the body heat ran in the family or if the fever was worsening. She looked at the beautiful young woman that Chuck was so desperate not to leave behind, reached out and smoothed a stray hair from Ellie's face and felt an irresistible urge to tell her that Chuck was everything she could have hoped and more.

"Hi Ellie, it's Sarah. I don't expect you to remember any of this but there are some things you should know about your brother."

Sarah had talked to two colleagues in a similar state and she would never know if either of them remembered distinctly what was said to them while they were unconscious or even realized that someone had been speaking to them. Neither of them had ever woken up.

Even so, she couldn't risk being overly specific in what she was about to say. She leaned in closely and whispered her secrets to the unconscious woman who so graciously and excitedly had welcomed her into her family circle.

"I know I've only known him for a couple of months but he's amazing. He's done things that would make most people curl up in a ball and wait to die or run away screaming. And he doesn't give himself enough credit for any of it. He jokes about screaming like a little girl...and, well, he does scream like a little girl sometimes. But it only reminds me of how completely unprepared he was for any of this."

"But that's the thing. He always does what's right no matter how scared he is. He can't sit by and watch anyone in danger. I want so much to protect him and not just because it's my job but he just won't stay in the car. And I don't even want to think about what it would be like if something happened to him.

"He makes me want to be more. Want to feel things I haven't felt in...well, some things I don't know if I've ever felt. There's parts of me I didn't even realize that I shut away. It was easier when I didn't know they were still there. But when he smiles at me it just...it makes me wish I had met him ten years ago. Thank you for being so sweet to me and helping me pretend that I could be that person."

She was getting off track. She didn't want to make this about herself. It was important to her to vocalize the things that Ellie couldn't see because Chuck was hiding his gifts inside what had become his former life.

"You just need to know that the pride you have in him is well founded and not just because of the craziness he helps us deal with. And I think maybe he's rediscovering the guy you saw him becoming when he was at Stanford. He's sweet and smart. Kind and thoughtful. He did something crazy to help save you. I'm going to get him through all this so he can be everything you ever wanted him to be. And you have to hang on so you can see it."

There she went making promises again. But it all boiled down to one last thing. One last impossible promise she shouldn't make.

"And he'll be happy."

She sat back in her chair and ruminated on that little revelation. That the most important thing in her life had somehow become making him happy. Or more accurately getting him to a place where he could be free to make himself happy.

Her making him happy was probably off the table.

"Everything OK?"

Sarah looked to the door where Chuck stood with two coffees and held one out to her. She smiled. Kind and thoughtful.

She looked back to Ellie, nodded toward Chuck and said "See? What'd I tell you?"

"What did you tell her?" Chuck asked as he sipped his coffee.

"Oh, you know. Just girl talk." They swapped places and she took a sip of her latte. "Casey should be about ready. I have to get in position. Take care of her."

She slipped out the door but lingered to watch the brother and sister and eavesdrop for a moment.

"I'm going to fix this Ellie, I swear. Look, I know that you just think I'm just Chuck, your screw up little brother. But there's a lot about me you don't know. See, I'm...I'm also Chuck the guy with all these important government secrets in my brain. I can make this better. I will make this better. Everything is so different now. Ellie, everything is so different now. I used to be able to come to you and ask your advice about anything. And now, my whole life is, like... a lie."

Sarah walked away with that thought in her mind - even as she passed Devon in the hallway and touched him reassuringly on the shoulder as he just stared unblinking and shattered at a ratty old green sweater in his hand - that Chuck felt like everything in his life - which included her - was a lie.

.

* * *

.

060: Toxic

.

Westside Medical Hospital, Burbank, CA; a short while later

.

Sarah watched through the glass walls of Ellie's hospital room as Chuck did the most amazing thing.

She watched a man who had been poisoned give the only available antidote to someone else.

This is how Chuck Bartowski loved. What it meant to him.

He _was_ a deep roller.

Moments later the three of them sat outside Ellie's room where no one disturbed them. They were each gradually succumbing to the toxin to which they had been exposed. Casey was fascinated by the spokes of a wheelchair's wheel, Chuck was fascinated by a spot on the far wall and his impending doom and Sarah was fascinated by Chuck's profile and whatever rambling point he was trying to make about blogging.

"I am so sorry about all of this," she said at the first lull in his speech. And by 'this' she meant everything.

That they hadn't met as a customer and helpful technician, that their every interaction since that day had been shrouded in lies, that his life had been stolen from him by people who cared little for his personal well being and that she couldn't bring herself to tell him even a hint of how highly she thought of him or how much she wanted to spend time with him as more than an agent.

That she _wasn't_ a deep roller.

When it came to embracing her feelings, she didn't allow herself to tumble at all.

Chuck suddenly stood up and scrambled to collect something from the floor half-way up the hall that none of them had initially noticed in their concern for Ellie. The device their poisoner had used to track them which Chuck, with an intense focus born of inspiration, now intended to use to track _him_.

Their poisoner's name was Riordan Payne, as Chuck had gathered from a perfectly visible thumbprint on the face of the device left in their pursuit - yet another new nuance to the Intersect's capabilities. An Olympic gymnast turned black market procurer of the extremely hard to find who used poison as a weapon of influence. They had little time to process the absurdity of it as Casey drove them - somehow steadily - with Chuck navigating toward the dot. The two men were bickering like school children as Sarah tried to fight the effects of the poison to prepare for whatever awaited them.

She was sure she had shaken it off as they approached the locked front doors of the building but she and Casey both moved to pick the lock. Chuck cut to the chase by simply asking who was better at it. When her hand shot up like an eager pupil and she grinned as Casey was forced to concede that she was the better picklock she knew she would have to fight the truth serum component of the poison much, much harder.

Not that Chuck was any better. Waiting for the elevator, she caught him looking at her and he couldn't help but exclaim loudly "God, you're so pretty."

Even as he turned to include Casey in his spontaneous compliments she tried nearly successfully to stifle her grin. It was one blessing of the truth serum: this was one compliment she would never have to wonder whether it was motivated by anything other than the truth. And the one truth that came to Chuck's mind, under threat of imminent death and even with her wearing no makeup and probably looking all waxy from the effects of the poison, was that she was pretty.

She tried to fight it. When they reached the door it was clear that Chuck was losing to the truth serum when he announced them at the door by their respective agencies only getting tripped up on how to best describe himself truthfully. The absurdity of his truth rivaling Payne's and seeming false on his own tongue.

Casey's truth came with a bullet to the cylinder of the door lock and the flippant suggestion that _that_ was his preferred skill set over her superior fingersmithing. But that _was_ Casey's skill set and she threatened Payne with being shot in the face but surprised herself - and Casey - when she referred to Casey as her partner. He actually seemed pleased by that and she had to admit that the term just felt right.

They were home free when Payne handed them all vials of the antidote. She was still fighting the urge to blurt out all sorts of ill advised truths and both she and Casey must have been lulled into the presumption that everyone present was still poisoned. After all, they had all been exposed at the same time and Payne had said he was about to take the antidote. It could have been the truth but Chuck spotted it. Based on comic book villains of all things.

Exposed in his lie the fool tried to escape with an acrobatic tumbling pass which, after everything they had just been through, really just pissed her off.

She lined up a center mass shot for his next rotation that would have blown his heart out through his spine but caught a glimpse of Chuck watching her - gun arm outstretched - in her peripheral vision. That was enough to make her shift her aim lower and, when he landed, she blasted his knee making him fall flat on his face.

"Holy shit! You Indiana Jonesed him!" Chuck exclaimed. She dreaded the look on his face but Chuck couldn't have been more in awe of her. And he wasn't quite accurate, Indiana Jones had killed his show-off adversary, but it caused a small ember in her heart to glow slightly more brightly thinking maybe he could accept the darker parts of her. She had become her childhood hero and this crazy, deep roller of a man wasn't put off by her in the slightest.

Neither was her partner. "Very unsportsmanlike. I like it," Casey quipped.

"We still need the antidote," Casey broke the magic of the moment by daring to point out that they were all three likely nearing the terminal portion of the serum's effects.

"Well, luckily we have a way to get an honest answer out of him," Chuck was the one who pointed out the vials of red truth serum that they recognized.

Luckily Chuck had been watching her so she hadn't killed him for killing them.

Payne had tried to outlast them but his own poison was too strong. He gave up the location of the antidote, the key to the cabinet and even the nuclear codes he had done all this to obtain.

Chuck frightened her a bit when he stopped her from taking the antidote, thinking he had spotted another trap.

"What's the matter?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he admitted. "It's just that this... This will probably be the last chance that I have to know the truth. I know you're... You're just doing your job here, but sometimes it feels so real, you know? So, tell me. You and me. Us. Our thing under the undercover thing. Is this ever going anywhere?"

She was pissed at first. The fair thing would be to let her take the antidote and ask her after. God damn him for putting her on the spot like this. But he was done with playing fair and she couldn't blame him. He saw this as his one chance to know, with absolute certainty, what was real and what was not. Was he just a job to her or was there more to it?

Was there more to them?

She gulped slightly and schooled her breathing. She hoped he didn't notice. That she was fighting the toxin as she had been since the moment they had been poisoned. She thought about what it could mean if she answered honestly. How he would take it as gospel and wait for her to work through her bullshit and always doubt her despite this moment. Ellie - under the influence of the same truth agent - had told her he would wait for her forever if he just knew where they stood.

It was the most important use she had ever found for this particular training. Resistance to these sorts of chemicals. And she was certain her face and body had given off a dozen tells but Chuck was focused on her words. Because he was certain there was no way for her to lie.

_Is this ever going anywhere?_

God bless him for asking the way he did. He didn't ask if she wanted it, he asked if it _would_ happen. That was something she could work with. All the things that could go wrong. Graham could reassign her. She could get him killed with poor choices. Or worse, he could get himself killed by putting too high a price on her safety. And that disturbing thought was what gave her the resolve to overcome any amount of Pentathol.

But ultimately it wasn't even all that hard. _This is never going anywhere_, she convinced herself. _They won't let it. I won't let it. No matter how much I want it to. _

_I'll never let you do for me what you did for Ellie._

She convinced herself to answer the literal question rather than the questions it implied.

"I'm sorry, Chuck. No."

It was one of the first lessons she had learned from her father.

There are all kinds of ways to lie.

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; the next day

.

Last night, Harry Tang had been relocated to Oahu with an effectiveness that implied that the move had been in the works for at least a few days. She had given Chuck her iPod the night of their sushi date because he said he was going to load it up. At the time she had hoped for something meaningful, maybe even a playlist of songs, but now that he had returned it nothing had been queued up. The closest thing to a message was a folder named 'oldies' - the one he had been playing in his bedroom - only now it had been stripped down to just one song.

She heard the scratch of the record and a jazzy piano. A saxophone solo followed by a trumpet solo. She thought it might have been an instrumental until a soulful voice entered at the halfway mark saying she was through with love and fooling herself. She wasn't sure to take it at face value or, upon listening closer, to mean that she was fooling herself to think she could ever give up completely. She scanned the remaining files and saw two albums by Arcade Fire but, of course, none of it was queued up. She hadn't been ready for that.

Her suspicion about Harry Tang was confirmed - at least in her mind - when she came to work to find a notice that Scooter was being transferred by corporate headquarters to manage two other stores. That was all that the post-it atop his ten pages of handwritten notes and reminders said but she saw Graham's hand in it all.

She was surprised how much quiet time there was without Scooter's constant micromanagement as she went about the opening procedures that she already knew by heart. All the while she recalled the look on Chuck's face yesterday before they each took the antidote as, even under the influence of the serum, he stifled any disappointment and accepted her lie graciously. Even thanking her for being honest. And worst, because it was just so him, joking about the position he had put her in and her inability to do otherwise.

Only a few customers had come in for breakfast or to leer at her as she staged the tables and, as the last of them left, she was surprised and happy to see Chuck come in. "Oh, hey. I didn't know you were coming by."

He looked flustered as he watched the customers leave and she wondered if they had left because they knew Chuck was her boyfriend. After he watched the last of them go, Chuck immediately launched into what he came here to say.

"Sarah, you know when you think you're going to die, and your whole life is supposed to flash in front of you?"

She did. She had thought about it at Stanford just a few days ago. And instead of the promised montage of her life she thought about library fees. But it led to thoughts of him and she hoped he was here to say something similar. He had figured everything else out about her, maybe he was here to call her out for her lie.

"That didn't exactly happen for me yesterday. In fact, mostly it was just a list that I saw. A list of stuff that I haven't done and things that I haven't had a chance to say. So today... Today, I want to start crossing things off of my list. And this is the first thing that I promised myself that I'd do."

The man had landed a helicopter - which had seemed to be his personal highlight when they were drugged - defused bombs twice and been poisoned once. She could understand the need for some reflection. He paused and gathered himself and leaned slightly toward her. If he kept going - or if she met him halfway - they would share a kiss that she wouldn't be able to explain away. No witnesses, no observers, no cover. No reason except the truth that she had expertly hidden.

One kiss would tell the truth. She didn't move but she dared to hope until he realized she wasn't going to and finally spoke again.

"We need to break up."

"What?" It slipped out without permission but she didn't have time to ask anything else as he continued.

"You know, you know, like, fake...fake break up our pretend relationship. I just can't do this anymore, you know? The longer we go, the longer we keep trying to fool people into believing that we're a real couple. The person I keep fooling the most is me."

He watched and waited. She could tell him. He was waiting for her to tell him he was wrong. To take back what she had said and tell him what she wanted. Tell him she wanted him.

But she wasn't prepared to tell him what she wanted. Wasn't ready to tell him what she had and had not done in her life. Tell him about the person he, even now, wanted to believe could be the person he trusted with every part of him. She wasn't ready to share every part of her. Wasn't ready for it to be real and for the dangers of her world to be one step closer to him. To see him face the danger by her side instead of the relative safety of behind her.

So instead she tried to be as brave as him and put on the same gracious mask of acceptance he had worn when she tried to save him from her yesterday.

He paused one last time, gave her one last chance to say something, and she just watched him turn and leave.

.

* * *

.

Shortly after Chuck left, her phone rang.

"Yeah," she answered Casey's call.

"I forgot to ask you. The kid's been acting weird since we took down Payne."

"What do you mean, Casey?"

"He's been quiet. He's never quiet. I might be able to talk Beckman down but you'll never get away with it with Graham if you two play it straight."

"I decided to go the other way, actually. He asked if there was anything between us...it would have been easy to tell him what he wanted to hear. I told him what he needed to hear."

"And he decided sandwich girl was the best way to deal with that?"

Sarah moved to the door and stepped outside. She looked over to the Buy More and saw Casey standing alertly outside the front doors looking at the deli which was swelling with breakfast customers. From her angle she could also see that the diminutive brunette owner had taken a break - even with a full house - and joined Chuck in a window seat, each of them with a blue ceramic cup of, presumably, coffee.

"I suppose so." _Can't blame him, really._

Her next unwelcome thought was that it should be her.

It should be her listening to his jokes and laughing, him smiling at her and reaching over to hold her hand. Telling stories about themselves that don't involve betrayal and bloodshed. Making plans they intend to keep.

He nearly died. Again. Of course he wants to start living. He gave her right of first refusal. And second and third. Truth serum must have seemed too good to be true. He thought she would no longer be able to evade or deflect and he thought he could finally get a straight answer from her. Just moments ago he had held out one last hope that she would take it all back. Gave her the opportunity to do so. And she hadn't.

His past two months had been nothing but near death experiences and half-truths from her that apparently had kept him wondering - or at least kept a kernel of doubt in his mind - whether he was just being handled by a trained professional. Maybe some part of their charade had given him some amount of new confidence. Or helped him rediscover his confidence. Maybe he'd be happy.

"Well, I told him I wouldn't shoot him if he gave the antidote to Ellie. Called him a good person for Christ sake," Casey spat and Sarah smiled at his disdain for even a tiny show of affection. Especially considering he was calling just to check up on his partner. Who would have thought? "What about you? Any damage control? Did you say anything to compromise yourself?"

"Uh, no. Kept it professional," she said even as she cringed at the implication of the word. _But if I hadn't been trained to resist Pentothal I would have_, she thought.

"It's probably for the best, Walker."

"Yeah. Probably."

They both disconnected and Sarah saw Casey pause to look at her as he turned to head back inside. She couldn't bring herself to care what he thought at the moment and turned her attention back to Chuck.

There are a thousand - or at least dozens - of reasons why it shouldn't be her. She knows she'll hurt him. Either with the truth of her destroying the foolish image he had created or worse he would do something foolish, choose to protect her over himself as he had done for Ellie.

It would be a wondrous thing for someone to care about you like that. But if she let him do that, one day he would roll all the way to the ground for her.

And she couldn't bear to see him do that. Not for her.

She wanted him to be happy but that's the single biggest reason it shouldn't be her.

It can't be her.

She turned to head back inside and see what might be burning. Fake break up or not, this stung. But that was her own fault. Her own fault for getting comfortable. For letting him in.

For wishing she was different.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: I give it short shrift here, but Ellie's "Words taste like peaches" might be my favorite standalone line in all of CHUCKdom. This episode is also when I realized that Yvonne is funny. Like seriously funny. Her reaction behind Devon's back to his awful 'riding a bicycle' comments and her putting her hand up when Chuck asks who's better at picking locks make this a favorite episode of mine. I just didn't like the snarky argument in Chuck's bedroom, especially (and even more so in the context of this story) him basically calling her a hooker.

There's a reason I start to reintroduce the seduction elements (which are still no more realistic than the Enforcer, the Intersect, kill orders or Project Omaha) to support future canon storylines. For those of you unfamiliar with 'the old Churchill joke', firstly, it is actually not attributable to Winston Churchill although commonly told that way to add gravitas. But the gist is: if you can be 'bought' (the joke is about sex but the concept extends to influence) for a ridiculous sum of money, does it matter that you wouldn't do that same thing - wouldn't compromise your morals or impugn your honor - for a much, much smaller amount?

The generic punch line is: "We have established what you are, now we are just haggling over price." It's completely unfair here that Sarah thinks that is Chuck's impression of her - and isn't she always terribly unfair to herself? - but they don't really get a chance to discuss it further.

I love a good 'secret relationship' story but this installment explores many reasons why it may not work - or would at least be extremely difficult - in a more suspicious environment requiring completely objective handlers willing to execute potential termination orders. Not the least of which is Chuck's unwillingness to engage in something that is partly for show. Especially when he realizes he will never really know just how much is for show. But it also occurred to me that even staying overnight with Chuck is likely the type of change in status quo that at least warrants a notification if not approval since their superiors will want to know why it is deemed necessary.

The "if I hadn't been trained to withstand Pentathol" line is SO important in canon because it's our only indication (or, more accurately, only confirmation) that Chuck's assumption that she had to be truthful with him under the influence of the toxin was wrong. I think it's better as internal dialogue but there's just no good way to do that on the show (don't say 'voiceover', I said 'good way' :)) Here she could probably say it out loud to Casey but she's putting her walls back up.

I considered the analogy of this dance between Chuck and Sarah as a game of chess from the prior installment and stumbled onto the word 'Zugzwang'. As an extension of its literal translation ('compulsion to move') it is commonly used to refer to a specific type of no-win situation. It refers to a situation in chess (and other games) where the player is compelled to make a move when they would prefer to stand firm because _any_ possible move will worsen that player's position. I hope the connection is obvious.

And, most importantly, after multiple rewatches and questionable online shopping searches, I'm still not convinced of where Sarah's coat-robe belongs on the coat-robe spectrum. Discuss!


	21. XXI: Beneath the Wreckage

...wherein team members cope with changes in dynamics and packages are delivered...

Canon Reference: All of Episode 109 'Imported Hard Salami' and a smidge of Episode 110 'Nemesis'

Contents: Six chapters, over 22K words (but over a thousand of that is notes, don't trust my word count!); mostly in the 3K-4K range, two are slightly shorter (2K-ish); I originally planned to cover 'Salami' and 'Nemesis' in a single installment. Shows you how well I plan. I was honestly surprised just how much is going on in both Chuck's and Sarah's heads in this episode and the word count reflects that. Any chapter break is a good stopping point in this one.

A/N: Thank you all - newcomers and old friends alike - for reading my little project, for the follows, favorites, reviews, and PMs and for any word of mouth promotion you may have engaged in. I try to respond to every review with some degree of substance but please forgive me if I ever fall off in that regard. It will only ever be in favor of focusing my recreational time on delivering the next installment because I do enjoy our discussions. Some truly epic and/or clever reviews can be found here. Honestly, my reviewers make for some pretty good reading of their own.

I didn't previously call it out as such but I consider these four episodes (Truth-Salami-Nemesis-Crown Vic) to be part of one arc; let's call it the 'Truth and Consequences' arc. ('cause that's super original). The impacts of these four episodes are tightly connected and the events transpire immediately following one another for the most part. There are ebbs and flows to every story and there is some serious 'ebb' in this one with some different feels than what came before.

'Salami' itself is a pretty robust episode with a lot of room for a lot of shifts in both Chuck's and Sarah's thinking so the treatment is somewhat more 'straight canon' than some other installments. There is one chapter here with a strange format for its majority. Please ignore the deliberate spelling and grammar errors, you'll understand when you see the context.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to Morgan's custom Subway Surf-N-Turf special (so gross), Call of Duty (COD4: Modern Warfare or otherwise), _Iris_ by Goo Goo Dolls, a short phrase I associate with an obscure Iron Maiden song (_Flash of the Blade_, if any song on the Powerslave album can be considered obscure), _Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl_ (aka POC-I), _Alice in Wonderland_ (pretty much any version), _The Cat in the Hat_, _Force 10 from Navarone_, _Vanilla Sky_ or the possible movies for an evening out in early-mid November, 2007 (_American Gangster_, _No Country for Old Men_, _Fred Claus_, _Love in the Time of Cholera_ and _Lions for Lambs_ are the ones mentioned or alluded to) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXI - Beneath the Wreckage

* * *

.

061: Selling It

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA, November 2007; two days after the fake breakup

.

Chuck had hoped that Morgan would be distracted enough by plans for poor-man's surf-and-turf (a half-and-half meatball, tuna salad sub) and the latest Call of Duty game that he would let it slide.

He was both a little miffed at the truth of his friend's assumption that he would never be the one to dump a girl like Sarah - because under almost any other circumstances that _would_ have been true - and didn't want Sarah to incur Morgan's righteous yet, from her perspective likely utterly toothless, wrath.

But since Morgan had continued to pry in the way that he did, Chuck felt obligated to clarify that, as much as he had wished differently, Sarah wasn't the right girl. At least not the right girl for him no matter what he had wished for, hoped for or convinced himself might be possible. He _really_ didn't want to elaborate on his being manipulated into thinking she was or might have been.

"The right girl? Are you out of your mind, dude? She is the hottest piece we are ever gonna get! "

"Listen, Morgan. Maybe the fact that you refer to any woman as a 'hot piece' has something to do with their lack of interest. And I didn't really see a future for Sarah and I, ultimately, and so I didn't want to waste any more time."

He didn't just not want to waste time, he couldn't. His life expectancy had dropped to nearly zero multiple times in the past few weeks. He stumbled into some hard truths about what it means to be considered a government asset, some harder truths about what it means to be handled and he was just starting to face the truth that he had no understanding whatsoever of his asset handler.

He told Sarah there was a list of things he wanted to do when he ended the farce of their cover relationship. He didn't want to be so melodramatic as to say 'before he died' but that was what he meant. Getting a better job or finishing his degree seemed insurmountable and pointless but falling in love again was possible. Even though a long-term relationship likely was not.

He had thought he already was - or was at least was well on his way to - falling in love again. He had almost left that stupid Goo Goo Dolls song on her iPod for her - and what a joke _that_ was. Leaving certain carefully selected songs for her thinking she was just reluctant to pursue anything with him for any number of potential reasons but was at least interested and that she'd understand what he was trying to say. Or what an even bigger joke if she _had_ understood. If she had known all along how he thought of her when he was always just a job to her.

At least now she had a sizable library of music to listen to and figure out her tastes. Maybe find a favorite band.

On her own.

If even that was true. He was such a sap. He still wanted her to shed that armor of hers and be happy - if she even was some version of the sweet girl he thought he saw underneath and not just the shell of hardened agent - but he thought he had earned a little wallowing time. Before he knew it was all a lie - even now that he knew - he heard that song every time he looked at her. The bit about being the closest to heaven that he'd ever be. At least here on Earth.

And it wasn't even just her looks. She hid everything amazing about her under that outer shell and even what shone through was amazing. Or maybe he had been as wrong about her as he had been about everything else. Even though she had her job to think about (and there _were_ probably difficulties around that), if she had just said he wasn't completely wrong about her - or shown him somehow since that seemed to be more her style - he would have found a way to deal with all the rest.

They could have found a way to deal with all the rest.

She sure sold the hell out of their cover. She must do that kind of thing all the time and feel nothing when she does. The deadly beauty from all the spy movies. And he was fool enough to think that whatever they had underneath the cover was somehow real. That he could measure up to the Bryce Larkins of the world. That he could somehow compare with someone she had apparently shared something of herself with. The male super spies who were her equal. Or at least much closer to considering themselves her peers. She just wasn't a mystery that he was going to be allowed to unravel.

There only ever was the cover.

Lou was real. She was pretty and a little obsessed with her business. But, in her defense, she had sunk all of her money into her deli and at least the work didn't involve life or death situations. She was quick tempered but sweet and funny. And honest. Brutally honest.

Maybe it wasn't fair that he was as interested in her for all those traits as he was because she was showing a legitimate interest in him. Maybe she was just Miss Right Now but, really, what was the likelihood he was going to be able to pursue anything longer term than that?

Due to the complete falseness of his relationship with Sarah, he figured he might be the only guy in history to successfully take advantage of the quirk of the universe where women only seemed interested in you once you were spoken for. Maybe it was too fast for his heart to take but he needed to break away from this fantasy that there was something real between him and Sarah.

She was still going to be around, in her official capacity, so he couldn't continue to avoid her entirely. He just didn't want to turn down an opportunity with someone who had very clearly expressed an interest in him due to delusions about another woman who had proven what a fool he was.

All it had taken to finally get the truth out of Sarah Walker: Secret Agent was a little toxic truth serum of which all three of them had clearly been under the influence.

Of course, the object of his romantic and less innocent fantasies for the past several weeks chose just that moment to enter.

She was wearing her hair down and straight in that wiener girl outfit and she looked...well, she looked beautiful but she also looked distraught. Making the best show possible for his Buy More coworkers, he assumed. And she made a small signal to indicate that she wanted to talk privately.

"Beg for her back, Charles." Morgan suggested less than helpfully - as though that were really an option - as though he ever 'had her' in the first place - as Chuck moved toward her.

"Hey," she offered quietly when he joined her.

"Hey. What's uhh..." he looked around for Casey or any signs of danger, "What's going on?"

"I just wanted to talk for a minute. Is there somewhere we can go?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes and looked much less in control than she usually did.

_Good_, he thought slightly vindictively. She shouldn't be walking around as though nothing had changed...even though it hadn't...because she had never been interested...it was his own fault that he-

He shook off that spiraling thought because it _was_ his own fault. He wanted to be angry with her but she really hadn't done anything wrong. He had known from the first night that she was a government agent and their relationship was a cover. Anything that had happened between them had to be considered in that context.

He didn't want to think too hard about the fact that she had been lying in his bed with him just a few days ago and whether whatever might have happened there would have been part of that same fiction. He knew - and had been harshly reminded of - the reality of the situation. Any mistaken interpretations from there were entirely on him.

"Yeah, sure. Follow me," he finally said. He headed toward the home theatre room and she followed.

Chuck had no idea what she could possibly want to talk about although there was a tiny ember of hope that she had reconsidered everything she had said or maybe said it for reasons that no longer made sense to her or maybe could make it make sense to him.

Then he realized what a fool he was being - again - and sighed deeply.

"Look, Chuck," came her sweet voice, softly from behind him and he turned to face her, "I've been thinking about our break up, and I'm not so sure it's the best idea."

That would have sounded mildly promising under other circumstances.

"Miss me already, huh?"

"Well...just...you know...for the cover. It makes things easier."

_Of course it does_. He had just been joking, trying to add a little levity to the situation, but now he was getting genuinely pissed off at being jerked around like this.

"Well, then I guess your job's gonna be a little bit harder," he snapped, surprising himself with his harshness.

"Look, I'm sorry if you thought there was something between us. It's very common in these situations to perceive a connection that isn't there."

Why did she feel it was necessary to rehash all of this? As if he didn't feel stupid enough. Better just to end this quickly.

.

* * *

.

Of course she missed him.

It had only been two days and he had come and gone from their intel reviews with a minimum of pleasantries. Two days where - after an initial discussion immediately after ending his cover relationship with her - Chuck had used his lunch breaks to convince the deli owner that it wasn't too soon since his break up with Sarah - his now ex-girlfriend Sarah - and that she should go on a date with him rather than spending his breaks people watching with _her_ and eating really unhealthy Weinerlicious food and being so delightfully _him_.

But she didn't want to confront that truth - that she missed him, even if it was meant to just be a cover - and hid behind the same lie she had been telling herself. It _is_ just a cover. He's just my asset. She needed that shield between them and reality firmly in place - for both their sakes in order to be allowed to remain and protect him - before she could further consider what they might do together or be to one another behind that shield.

But why had she said _that_? Implied that there was nothing between them? That the connection he so astutely perceived, despite her best efforts to conceal or downplay it, was not real? She had laid the cornerstone of her fortress with a misdirection ploy and now - free to lie as easily as she had all her life - she felt compelled to reinforce the walls with new and bigger lies, none of them technically untrue.

She was sorry that he thought 'something' was there...because it ended up hurting him, not because he was wrong. Maybe it was common for people in cover situations to perceive non-existent connections but she didn't explicitly tie that scenario to theirs even though she knew it sounded like she had.

She was raised and trained to lie. Such misdirections were almost an animalistic survival instinct now. And she had no doubt that she was struggling to survive close proximity to Charles Bartowski.

The idea of something real with this earnest man seemed terrifying beyond words and she felt like it would only be hazardous to him to get involved with someone like her but two days of cold indifference and watching him woo someone else had made her waver. She had dared to consider that maybe she could try to tell him a few truths about herself and gauge his reaction.

But she wasn't used to Chuck being combative with her and her defense - like always - consisted of going on the offensive. She put him on the other side of her shield leaving only her behind it.

Alone. Like always.

It was comfortable and safe and her default position with men. Or it used to be comfortable and safe until she knew what comfortable and safe really felt like. Now she wanted to reach out and take it back even though she still wanted to keep him safe from her and other only mortally dangerous aspects of her world.

She wished for a moment that he knew.

Knew that it had taken every ounce of her training and restraint not to blurt out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth while under the influence of that serum. It was resisting those effects - behaving much as Ellie had when she blurted out various unrelated truths of unpredictable nature and varying importance - that had allowed her to focus on what she needed to do.

Even so, she had almost told him how devastating his smile was. How it could elate her or crush her. How sweet and kind he was. How much she enjoyed just talking to him. How much she enjoyed kissing him. How much she _really_ enjoyed kissing him. How much she admired his bravery. How even though she didn't see any possible way anything between them was going anywhere - as he had phrased it - she wondered whether they might be able to try. At least give in to the physical attraction and see what happened.

How she had considered jumping his bones when she stayed over and how she had chickened out, not because she didn't want him but because all of those feelings were so unfamiliar and overwhelming for her. She had quickly realized that, even if she had initiated a physical intimacy that she could sell as 'enhanced cover' to her superiors, there was no way it would be 'just sex'. And that scared the hell out of her.

Because he wanted more. He wanted real. He at least _thought_ he wanted all of her.

And she wanted him all the more for that.

But she had seen the selflessness of Chuck in action too many times. He had already discussed terminating himself if he became an unrecoverable liability. She couldn't bear the thought of him sacrificing himself in such a way, but even less sacrificing himself to save her if the situation arose. She knew the risks of her life and career - had faced and accepted them - and didn't want him sacrificing himself for her. If it came to it and only one of them lived on she knew which she wanted it to be. Protecting him from his own foolish bravery required protecting him from her own foolish desires.

So she had relied on all of her training as a spy to suppress the random truths floating though her mind due to the pentathol derivative and all her childhood training as a con artist to pull off the most elegant of lies. She lied by telling a narrow and specific truth.

It was the classic technique her father had taught her. Let other people fool themselves. Let them believe what they want to believe or allow them to avoid what they fear to face. Make them think what you want them to believe was their idea.

How many times had she heard him say 'I never _lied_ to you' when he had been as deceitful as anyone could possibly be? Creating a false impression didn't necessarily require telling a blatant falsehood. The fact that she saw a very low likelihood that she and Chuck could get away with any type of relationship for very long without her being removed from this assignment was not directly related to the question he had _really_ been asking.

Even so, she had hoped he might reconsider the wisdom of pursuing a civilian relationship - perhaps even selfishly hoped he might reconsider diving into something with anyone after being hurt by her - but she hadn't meant to so bluntly reinforce her deceptive implication that there was no connection between them.

He didn't deserve her hammering him over the head with it but _clearly_ there was a connection. He could see through her every other time, surely he could see through her now despite her inability to face the truth outside of a candlelit bedroom.

As she opened her mouth to somehow try to salvage what she had blurted out he, uncharacteristically, cut her off.

"Of course. I get it. It's the old story, you know? Guy gets supercomputer in his brain, beautiful CIA agent is sent to protect him, and then she tells him, while under the spell of truth serum," he emphasized, making the reason for his certainty that he had been wrong about her crystal clear, "that she's not interested. I get it. But for me, the emotional roller coaster is a little much, so I think I'd rather find something a little less common, like, say, I don't know, a, uh, a real relationship?"

As good a liar as she was he was so much better with words. A surgical strike keying off of her assertion that perceiving false connections was common thing. Or worse, a common thing for her. As though anything about their connection was common. Or false, even though she was the one who led him to believe it to be so. That a real relationship might be a rarer thing than being lied to by someone who had once asked you to trust her.

She knew he was angry, and he had every right to be, but it was the damn truth serum that was keeping him from trusting what he thought he knew. But did she really think he would just reconsider? Turn down a woman who knew what she wanted and how to go after it in favor of someone who couldn't even admit what she wanted to herself?

Maybe she didn't choose the best way to articulate that. "And you think just running to the nearest available girl is the answer?"

"Sorry if that bruises your ego. Or hurts someone's assessment of your job performance," he answered, "but I'm not waiting around wondering what I could have done with my time the next time I have to disarm a bomb."

"I'm just saying, people know you and, well, hopping from girl to girl...Does that look realistic?"

"I don't care what looks realistic. You and I never looked realistic."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Jesus, Sarah, figure it out," like he really needed to articulate the ways that he didn't measure up to someone like Sarah. "At least I know where I stand with her."

"Where's that?"

Chuck realized he didn't really know where he stood with Lou. He had known her for just a few days. But he wasn't about to give Sarah the satisfaction of knowing that pursuing Lou may have been as much about her as it was Lou herself. "Not lying to me about how she feels for one. Saying one thing and showing another."

"I never lied to you, Chuck," she spat bitterly, cringing as she realized what she said. Her father's words out of her mouth knowing exactly what deception she had created even if nothing had been patently untrue.

She watched Chuck's face harden and knew she had messed up. Chuck thought about not just every kiss and touch they had shared, but every meaningful glance, joke and other quiet moment and how real it had all felt. And now thought about how real it had not been.

"You know what? You're right. I'm well aware. Now. Thanks. Why are we even arguing about this then? You don't have to play girlfriend any more and we're going out tonight anyway so..."

"Who's going...You're really going out with her?"

"Yeah, why not?"

She had been thinking about it for the past two days. Maybe she should have just jumped him that night in his room. Maybe she could have shown him what she couldn't say.

But now there was no way to _say_ why she really didn't want him to go out with Lou that didn't scuttle all her carefully constructed defenses. It was clearly a lost cause now and there was nothing left to do but make their change in cover status known.

"Okay, Chuck, well, if that's what you want, then I'm gonna have to sell it."

She had been crying on cue for almost twenty years. It was yet another way to lie. She could feel it welling up even as he spoke. Both his anger at her and then, worse, his resignation. And she did need to sell it for his co-workers. The way her brow scrunched up was almost involuntary and she actually had to dial it back a little. She hadn't meant to upset Chuck but he was clearly concerned.

"You okay?" he asked in a completely different tone than the rest of their conversation to that point and his expression defied his attempts to repress whatever it was he felt for her.

_Shit. Don't look at me like that_, she thought. Even after saying all that, his brave front slipped at seeing her cry. He still cared. And that made it so much worse but she had to see this through for his own good. To restore the status quo. Or at least restore their roles to the clinically separated asset and protector. To leave thoughts of anything else between them behind.

She almost lost control at that point and she turned to walk out as fast as she could, hearing him call the name 'Sarah' after her that no longer seemed like it was hers.

Thankfully she caught the eye of some of Chuck's co-workers so this wasn't a wasted visit. As she walked out the door she thought about the discussion she had with Casey this morning after their intel review where Chuck had casually mentioned that he had a date tonight. If Chuck was going to insist on seeing the sandwich girl, Sarah had to breakup with him publicly. People knew him and what a good guy he was. It would invite questions. She just thought maybe she could say something to get him to reconsider.

Why had she led with talking about the cover? It just got him agitated. And she dug a deeper and deeper hole. By the time he revisited just why he was so convinced by her lie - because the most potent truth serum either her or Casey had ever encountered should have guaranteed him hearing the truth not knowing that she had been finding creative ways to lie almost as long as she had been able to speak - she was already fighting the emotional display required to sell their breakup like she had come to do.

As she unlocked the front door of the Weinerlicious she left the handwritten 'Back in 10 Minutes' sign taped to the glass of the door, locked the door behind her and realized she could stop selling their breakup anytime now. That the tears still trickling down her cheeks were still coming. She had lost control of her emotions but she could get it back.

She could regain control. Cement her spy mask firmly in place. Never feel this way again or, if she did, hide it much more effectively. From everyone around her and from herself.

She sat at one of the tables near the door and put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. All she could think was how stupid she was to keep hiding behind the job and not tell him what she wanted. That was no way to get it.

There _was_ no way to get it.

He had moved on to someone else. Worse, she had succeeded in fully convincing him that she had been leading him on the entire time.

The relationship that never really began was over.

She had done what she set out to do for Chuck's own good and destroyed all hope for anything between them.

She managed to control her crying after only a few rough, coughing sobs after that and became the steely-eyed Agent that she needed to be to survive this just as she had survived far worse situations. Actual lethal situations in the far corners of the world.

None of which compared at this moment to this feeling of bleeding out without the release of actually dying, sitting in the empty dining room of a fast food franchise.

.

* * *

.

062: Coffee with Casey - Tough Love

.

Major John Casey's Residence, Echo Park, CA, later that evening

.

General Beckman was bewildered by this turn of events. "I don't like the idea of this break up at all. What the hell happened?"

"She got dumped."

Casey was mercilessly succinct with his assessment while Walker tried to spin a less embarrassing story. "We decided that it would be best for Chuck to date a civilian. It will help secure his cover in the event that someone IDs me."

Casey was no help. "Yeah, because she got dumped."

Luckily Director Graham was on his way to Europe for some reason they were not privy to and could not attend this briefing leaving only General Beckman to convince. General Beckman was less concerned with Agent Walker's failure to deliver on the plan they had agreed upon and more concerned about this new variable in their equation.

"Let me get this straight," she began condescendingly, "Some woman comes in off the street and starts dating the asset, and this doesn't strike either of you as suspicious?"

Walker, predictably, leapt to Bartowski's defense. "It's not completely unfeasible. He is a reasonably charming guy."

Casey didn't miss the quirk in the General's expression. "I've heard enough. I want to know everything there is to know about this woman before she gets too close," the General said before disconnecting the video conference.

"What the -" Sarah began to target Casey for his comments about being dumped.

"Don't even, Walker." Casey interrupted, easily identifying a 'best-defense-is-a-good-offense' approach. "Seriously? Reasonably charming?"

"What? He is."

Casey just sighed and shook his head. He thought it was entirely possible that Beckman was on to them. He counted his blessings that Graham - who supposedly knew Walker much better - had not been in attendance. Honestly, who was just wandering around the greater Los Angeles area that was going to randomly identify Sarah Fucking Walker?

Bartowski was easy to understand. Walker was extremely attractive even if she was a career hard ass. But Walker surprised him. Chuck was a good guy, relatively good looking and, Casey had to admit, reasonably charming in an endearingly sincere way but he was not nearly the type of guy he would have expected Walker to be into. Especially knowing about her history with Larkin.

Casey hadn't exactly considered before that whatever Walker was thinking about Bartowski could be much more than raw chemistry. Just a mutual attraction or an itch that needed scratched. Given her reputation - or what little of the reputation he had uncovered early in their partnership that he could attribute to her - he had assumed she was in complete control. Or at least capable of keeping her emotions firmly in check.

He had assumed that someone known as Graham's Enforcer would have learned to compartmentalize their physical urges and emotional desires in very separate places.

It wasn't until he watched her from across the parking lot staring longingly at the deli the day after they recovered the antidote - after she had successfully convinced Chuck there was nothing between them - that he seriously considered whether their physical attraction could be something far more dangerous.

Casey had tried to give the two of them options if they wanted to have a tumble, keep Bartowski fat, dumb and happy and keep their sex lives out of their work but Walker made her choice and had to live with it. She would have had to convince Bartowski that it was real for him to buy in and, for whatever reason, she was either unwilling or unable to do that.

He actually respected Chuck for making that clear. For passing up something casual with someone with whom he was clearly infatuated and who was so physically attractive. He couldn't really blame Chuck for not seeing through her, Walker was good at making people believe what they wanted to believe. He wasn't sure Walker knew what she felt. She wasn't a child but Casey figured she might not have any history with healthy relationships outside of the spy game. But he wasn't her therapist and, now that she had burned that bridge, he considered how best to get her head back in the game.

When he asked before the briefing why she hadn't taken advantage of the ruse they had cleared with both the General and Director Graham, she just said she had done it for the good of the mission. Casey suspected she had done it for the good of the man.

Or at least her perception of what that might mean. She had cut him loose in such a way that he no clue of whatever she might have felt. In fact, Chuck had assumed the worst. But Casey knew someone hiding from themselves when he saw it.

If this really was something more than a physical thing she needed to put it behind her quickly. General Beckman would tolerate some manipulation tactics but she expected her agents to remain objective. In some ways she was more controlling than Graham. She generally didn't go in for some of the Director's more distasteful tactics but that also meant she didn't tolerate anything unprofessional.

If the General was the sole authority on this project she probably wouldn't even allow the same fraternization between full-status agents that Walker once had with Larkin much less an agent who actually had some sort of feelings beyond simply fooling around with an asset.

"So, there's nothing between you two. He's not interested in you and you're not interested in him," Casey stated rather than asked.

Sarah stood up far too straight and proud and confirmed - at least to him - the opposite of the words she said. "There's not. It's true."

"Wanna try that once more _without_ feeling? You gotta sell it or the General's going to think it's a problem. I could sell the idea of you messing around with him a little bit - keeping him on a string - as long as you were still a known quantity. Being a liability? She won't overlook that."

"I'm not," she said. And at Casey's questioning look she clarified. "A liability. I'm not."

_No_, Casey thought his original confusion to her answer was correct, _you're not a known quantity_.

The woman in front of him had made a career of not being a known quantity. Suddenly, Sarah Walker was a wild card in a very different way than her anonymous piecemeal reputation.

"Keep practicing. Work on it while you pull sandwich girl's background off the CIA databases. I'll run NSA and the tax stuff. It's not a big deal to you. You couldn't give a shit that he's dating this girl. Make me believe it or I'm not putting you in front of Beckman again. Graham's your problem."

"Fine. I'll do my work from my place," Sarah said brusquely as she gathered her things and moved to the door.

"No need to check on him, I'm watching his tracker," Casey called after her and she just glared back at him before she left and slammed the door.

As Casey watched her go he considered that he may have completely misread the magnitude of this problem.

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Residence, Echo Park, CA; the next evening

.

Casey hadn't missed Walker's steely iron mask sliding into place when Chuck had referred to Lou as his 'girlfriend' at their morning briefing. Honestly, the kid had only _known_ her for a few days, and they had been on _one_ date. Why was he in such a rush to label things?

Casey considered that maybe it was to distance himself from Walker as much as possible. Or maybe more than a few near death experiences had pushed him to live life faster. He could understand either one.

He was reasonably sure General Beckman also had not missed Walker's stoic non-reaction to the word. Although the General's primary concern was likely that Chuck was involved with someone who had described her ex-boyfriend - the man whose name Chuck had flashed on last night, nightclub owner Stavros Demetrios - as highly dangerous and unstable even if he were not potentially involved in illicit smuggling operations.

At least tonight, now that they were using his new girlfriend's prior relationship to their advantage, Chuck was finally characterizing this as merely the fledgling relationship that it was as he lamented the fact that tonight's date would double as an intelligence gathering mission.

"We're only on our second official date and already I'm lying to her."

"Relax. It's dating in L.A. Everyone lies," Casey declared.

"Speaking of," Chuck directed at Sarah, "I heard you put Lester in his place."

"What'd he say?" she asked. Maybe Chuck shouldn't have encouraged it but he was pretty sure Sarah would dismantle Lester Patel.

"Oh, he said you said that you'd get back to him. That he had you right where he wanted you. That kind of B.S. but there was a very different story written on his face. What'd you do to him anyway?"

He was learning. Questioning everything and she was proud of him for that. And glad that Lester - although she had taken a page out of Carina's playbook and called him Larry - hadn't said anything about her aggressively wrapping her legs around him to freak him out.

He wasn't the one she wanted to be wrapping her legs around anyway.

"Just what I usually do when dealing with assholes on missions," she answered somewhat honestly. That approach had been somewhat opposite to her usual but with a similar intent.

"And you had some words of wisdom for Lou?"

"What'd _she_ say?" Sarah asked, aware that she was getting repetitive in her questions.

"Not much. I steered her into these plans for tonight. Because, yay for spying. What did _you _say?"

"Just the usual hurt-him-and-I-kill-you stuff. I figure you and I are still going to have to interact for me to protect you. To work together. The psycho stalker angle works for me."

"Gee, thanks for not interfering with-"

"We're going to be tapped into the club's surveillance feed," Casey interrupted, irritated with the direction of the conversation. "All we need is the audio."

Walker produced the required device, embedded in a white, flying-V guitar pin straight off an 80's heavy metal album cover. "This has an RK-7 mini mic that works up to 20 feet. I want you to keep it as close to Stavros as possible."

"Are you kidding?" Chuck asked as Walker affixed the cheesy pin to his lapel. "Are you kidding me with this? I can't wear this. This looks ridiculous."

"The alternative is we join you on your date," Casey threatened yielding the expected petulant response.

"Fine."

"Ear wig," Walker held a case containing the miniature one-way communication device in front of Chuck.

It wasn't fair to be angry with her. She was just standing there holding the case out to him and had literally said two words to him. With those impossibly long eyelashes and an air of complete indifference, he was still irritated with her and he couldn't even figure out why.

"It never stops with you people, does it?" he asked as he grabbed the ear wig and fitted it into his ear canal.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Romeo?" Casey asked as he held out a beautiful, single red rose.

"Oh, of course. Let me guess. This is equipped with some kind of microscopic, infrared tracking device that determines her mother's communist affiliations?" Chuck raised his voice comically and Walker couldn't help but smile at his coldness and snarky sense of humor.

Until Casey chimed in.

"No, idiot. It's so you can get laid."

.

* * *

.

Spy Van, outside Club Ares, Los Angeles, CA; that night

.

Sarah and Casey had assumed control of the club video feeds, established their audio link, sipped their cheap take out coffee and watched as Chuck and his date Lou Palone engaged Chuck's target, Lou's ex-boyfriend Stavros Demetrios.

_"Cool pin. I'd wear mine but I left it in the 80's."_ They heard Stavros predictably ridicule Chuck's listening-device enabled, very dated pin before inviting his ex-girlfriend and her date to the VIP area for a drink and likely more juvenile taunting.

Casey keyed the his own mic to connect with Chuck's ear wig. _"Have the drink, Chuck."_

"What _was_ with that pin, Walker?" Casey asked without turning from the monitors.

"What do you mean?" she answered, equally attentive to the video monitors, with as much emotion as if he had just asked her about yesterday's baseball scores.

"You could have put an RK-7 in anything. Put it on the back of a shirt button or something."

"He likes music. It was a personal touch," she smiled smugly.

"Bullshit. We had plenty - I had a whole box of the American flag ones right there - and that was probably the dorkiest one."

"Maybe I had to offset you giving him flowers," she said angrily as she looked squarely at him for the first time. "What was with the rose, Casey?"

It was Casey's turn to grin smugly. What was with the rose was that he wanted to get a rise out of Walker. See where her head was at. Which she had tipped off with that goofy pin before he even gave Chuck the rose, not after.

"Guys got needs," he offered with a shrug as though he did it out of some sort of male solidarity. "You had your shot. I told you we gotta take _what_ we can _when_ we can."

"You sound like a fucking pirate," she mumbled, Casey's words reminding her of the fantastical ghost story movie she had watched with Chuck. She had loved it and there were supposedly two sequels that he said were just as good. Watching them with him was one of many things that wouldn't be happening. Both she and Casey turned their attention back to the monitors where the tedious mechanics of ordering and receiving drinks had just played out.

They both listened to talk of what a fiery Italian Lou was and a luxurious-sounding trip to Mykonos, Stavros clearly waving his money and his boorish 'been-there-done-that' comments about Lou in Chuck's face. Casey smirked at Stavros' next loaded comment, designed to make Chuck uncomfortable but having a similar effect on Walker as it came over the comms.

_"The scar is from the make-up sex. She's a tiger."_

Casey prompted Chuck to get back on mission, _"__Get on with it, Chuck!"_ before turning his attention back to Walker. "Pirate or not, if you wanted him, you had your shot. Now he's got his. You leadin' him on all the time wasn't helping."

"I've just been working the cover," she hid behind the story she had been hiding behind for weeks, not willing to admit that what both her partner and her former cover boyfriend now saw as leading him on was the most real relationship she had ever had.

"And now you're just peeved that he's seeing a professional at hiding the salami over the girl who just handles wieners all day?"

Walker just rolled her eyes at Casey's smirk and his attempt to bait her with his obvious and crude comment. She was surprised he had lasted this long before pulling something like that one out but wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

"Maybe _we_ could all just be professionals, how 'bout that?" she continued. "I haven't had some overwhelming desire to go slutting around, you haven't-"

"The hell I haven't," Casey interrupted. "But then I don't _have_ a cover girlfriend. What do you think I do when you two have a 'cover date'," he emphasized heavily, "and you say 'you got this'?"

"You haven't been monitoring me?"

He hadn't. He had gone out to a few bars near local military bases, mixed with some locals and found a couple of temporary companions whenever Walker and Bartowski were safely tucked away for the evening.

"Not all the time. Not real time anyway. I check in here and there but I've got enough to worry about during the day between him, the Buy Morons and customers without making it a round the clock job. That's why we split it, right? I don't want you compromised but I'm not trying to catch you and rat you out. Sometimes - like your botched sleepover - I just wanna see what's going on so I don't get blindsided. I was going to shut it down when you closed the deal and go out myself but you couldn't bring it home."

"Payne poisoning Ellie might have had a little bit to do with that."

That was true. Casey had been lucky to pick up the cross talk from the bug planted on Ellie but he wasn't about to let her off the hook yet. "Keep telling yourself that. What you do is your business. As long as you don't break him. Now I gotta worry about the fiery Italian 'tiger' in there breaking him."

When that failed to get a rise out of her he continued. "What are you so scared of anyway? Or is it more than just a little mutual attraction?"

"No. And I'm not scared of anything. It just wasn't going to work. He's too smart."

"Yeah, outsmarted himself all the way to deli-girl. Hey, there's that auto parts guy that's always coming to the wiener joint. There's no way he's even eating what he buys from you."

Walker knew what Casey meant. The guy's name was Rick and he was a typical LA gym rat. If he had been eating half of the corn dogs he had bought from her he wouldn't look like he looked. He was good looking, and he knew it, but she wasn't interested in Casey's suggestions that he continued to encourage. "You're available. Take him out for a spin. Blow off some steam."

"It's not about just blowing off steam." And she was surprised to hear herself saying it wasn't. She wondered if maybe she should just settle for that as she always had before. It just wasn't anywhere near as appealing as it once was. In fact, just the idea made her feel the Chuck-shaped void in her life more acutely.

They left it at that for now as both listened to Stavros and his petty intimidations hidden behind an affable air. Still clearly jealous of anyone dating Lou.

_"Ooh, you got a small neck, huh?"_ Stavros' continued taunts could be heard over the comm link.

_"Thank you very much,"_ Chuck answered and Casey noted the concern on Walker's face.

_"Like a chicken,"_ Stavros continued.

"He does have a small neck," Casey confirmed with a chuckle as he unwrapped his simple dinner for the evening.

"Maybe I should go in," Walker suggested and Casey was about to just say 'not yet' until he saw the genuine concern etched into her face.

"Same bit with you, huh?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

This was getting to be a pattern with her, feigning ignorance, or maybe she really didn't have a grasp on her own thoughts and desires.

"You need me to spell it out? Fine. You fall for the guys you work with. First Bryce, now our boy Chuck."

"Bryce was a mistake, and I haven't fallen for Chuck."

"Yeah, whatever you say. And just so we're clear, sister," Casey pointed vaguely to his own chest, "not interested."

Walker just rolled her eyes as Stavros' veiled intimidation continued.

_"Have you ever snapped a chicken's neck, Chuck?"_

_"Can't say that I have."_

_"It's much easier than you would think."_

"That's it. I'm going in."

Casey maintained his surveillance as Walker ignored his protests, went into the club easily allowed in by the doorman and basically made an ass of herself. Psycho stalker worked for her. Maybe he could order a big fucking neon sign that says 'compromised, please reassign' for her to wear around her neck at their next briefing. It wouldn't be much more obvious but it might save some time.

He watched Chuck torn between following his new 'girlfriend' and trying to get back to Yari and Stavros' conversation. He was stopped by security but put that stupid pin to good use flipping it onto a tray of drinks. Good boy, Chuck. Casey muttered low enough that Chuck probably didn't hear it. He was glad he hadn't lied to General Beckman about one thing: Bartowski did always do the right thing. Unfailingly.

The father and son didn't notice Chuck's move or the pin on the tray underneath the caddy and continued to speak freely as Walker rejoined Casey in the surveillance van and donned her headphones without comment from Casey and Yari Demetrios gave them what they needed.

_"Four o'clock. Tomorrow afternoon. San Pedro. The package is time sensitive so if it expires we are all dead."_

"Gotcha," both Casey and Walker muttered in unison.

.

* * *

.

Casey pulled up to the taxi stand where Chuck had just been abandoned by his date. Walker's compliments were dripping with sarcasm and a tone of 'I told you so'.

"Nice work, Chuck," Sarah focused solely on the mission rather than the date she had derailed. "We know when and where the package is coming. Mission accomplished."

"How was the date?" Casey teased.

"Is it me, or does our government never want me to have sex again?" Chuck asked and Casey just grunted and nodded toward the sliding door of the van while Walker just looked straight forward through the windshield.

"I thought you were kidding about the psycho stalker angle," Chuck grumbled as he closed the door and situated himself in the uncomfortable confines of the van's rear surveillance equipment area.

"Told you it would be problematic," Walker replied pragmatically. "I had to get a message to you. Think I _like_ being the needy stalker in this scenario?"

"Well, the role suits you," realizing with some degree of confusion that she had never in fact communicated any specific message to him. She had said she wanted to make sure he was okay.

"Shut up," she snapped as she turned back and slouched in her seat.

To Casey's shock and complete surprise, he did.

.

* * *

.

063: Multiplayer

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA, late that night

.

Sarah retrieved the barely used XBox from under her bed, plugged it in and connected it to her television. She configured the system and connected to the game server. She inserted the Stealth Underlords game she had bought out of the discount bin as instructed, logged into the waiting room and initiated a head-to-head match, the only game currently active on this game's server. She checked her watch noting that her opponent was late and went to wash her face.

They had maintained their signal of coffee purchases on their combined account to provide rough locations and Carina kept sending those stupid LOL Cats pictures to confirm she was OK. After watching Chuck and Morgan play various online games on the X-box while she and Ellie chatted about work (Ellie's real job and Sarah's cover job), Sarah had suggested this untraceable channel to Carina so they could talk occasionally.

Carina had suggested this specific game for some reason and this was only the second time they had tried this. The first had been cut short by a surveillance trigger on Carina's mission and she wondered if something like that was what was keeping her this time.

She heard a ping followed by several other varied sound effects, finished what she was doing and returned to find several messages on the screen:

StiletoWispRed has entried the arena

StiletoWispRed has machine guned you

StiletoWispRed has stabbed you

StiletoWispRed has blown you up

StiletoWispRed killed by own rocket

The other character was now pressed up against her own avatar and jumping up and down. It took a second for Sarah to realize the other avatar was essentially humping hers.

BLackLiLy...whatre you doing?...

Sarah typed her message via the onscreen keyboard and the humping thankfully stopped.

StiletoWispRed...there you are...

BLackLiLy...you know you spelled both words wrong...

StiletoWispRed...call it stylized...

BLackLiLy...prefer to call it wrong...

Sarah teased knowing that, even though some would see three words and others would have different visions of stilettos and whispers, Carina had learned her lessons well. Some lessons taught by Sarah. And there had been more than one occasion when Carina's stiletto had whispered in someone's ear. They occassionally turned to face her not knowing they were already dead.

StiletoWispRed...whatever, love your tribute to alliteration...

BLackLiLy...thought id use something youd recognize too...

StiletoWispRed...not much need, this place is d-e-a-d, sorry im late...

BLackLiLy...not interrupting something am i?...

StiletoWispRed...nope, went out but got in around 3, was killing time playing COD4 and getting owned, dude called me a noob but taught me a little about what I was doing wrong, im totally going to thrash him when I get better...

BLackLiLy...whats COD?...

Sarah was reasonably sure Carina did not mean 'Cash on Delivery'. She was a little surprised to hear Carina had gone out - clearly clubbing until three am local time - and had come home alone. It wasn't unheard of but it wasn't exactly common either.

StiletoWispRed...COD is call of duty, came with this xthingy you made me get, it's awesome...

BLackLiLy...why arent we playing that then?...

StiletoWispRed...cuz theres hundreds of active games, this game was a FLOP widely known as the crappiest online play ever, we play this dog so we're not interrupted...

StiletoWispRed...but how do you not know COD? doesn't your boyfriend WORK at a electronics store? they have those big displays, right?...

BLackLiLy...not anymore...

StiletoWispRed...he doesnt work there anymore or they don't have displays up? its almost Christmas...

BLackLiLy...no, not my boy friend anymore...

StiletoWispRed...want me to hurt him?...

Sarah smiled at that but no.

BLackLiLy...no its my own fault...

StiletoWispRed...he just dumped you?...

BLackLiLy...no, we sort of had a sleepover...

StiletoWispRed...YAY :)...

BLackLiLy...except he started asking about HANDLING assets and how to tell whats real...

StiletoWispRed...not good, before or after?...

BLackLiLy...before, there was no after...

StiletoWispRed...:( well you said he was smart, although he could have blown you off AFTER so theres that, what did you say?...

BLackLiLy...that it happens, that it would mean selling a different story to higher ups tho...

StiletoWispRed...and that you liked him, right?...

BLackLiLy...i implied it...

StiletoWispRed...but you didn't say it?...

BLackLiLy...wouldnt have changed anything...

StiletoWispRed has machine guned you

BLackLiLy...should I have?...

StiletoWispRed...you think?...

Sarah had been ignoring the gameplay itself but now started wandering the massive arena out of a habitual need to see her adversary coming. Carina was remaining silent so Sarah eventually reinitiated the conversation.

BLackLiLy...yesterday I tried to talk him back into dating me...

StiletoWispRed...HOW did you say it, howd you make your case?...

Sarah thought for a moment and tediously pecked out a response.

BLackLiLy...that he was making the cover a problem and I was sorry he read too much into us, then I turned on the water works for his coworkers...

StiletoWispRed...what am I missing?...

BLackLiLy...what do you mean?...

StiletoWispRed...hes crazy about you, howd we get from a to c?, what did you do?...

BLackLiLy...he asked a direct question and i answered...

There was a slight delay while Carina puzzled out what Sarah was saying.

StiletoWispRed...and he bought it?...

BLackLiLy...there was honesty juice involved...

Sarah figured Carina would be able to decipher that she meant truth serum where anyone else would assume she meant alcohol.

StiletoWispRed...so you lied to him, then lied to him some more, nice moves...

StiletoWispRed...i wouldve actually used the words *dating me* to get someone to go back to dating me...

StiletoWispRed...im kooky like that...

BLackLiLy...gets worse, were looking into someone associated with the new girl and i may have crashed the date...

StiletoWispRed...theres a new girl? was it that fast? whats she got that you dont?...

BLackLiLy...shes an ugly little troll...

Sarah grinned to herself, wishing it to be true.

StiletoWispRed...so is everyone compared to you, whats up really?...

BLackLiLy...shes pretty, and short, he probably has to get on his knees to kiss her...

StiletoWispRed...or pick her up hubba hubba, or maybe she likes him on his knees...

BLackLiLy...u r so helpful...

StiletoWispRed...what else?...

BLackLiLy...she met him at work but he had to introduce me as his girlfriend...

BLackLiLy...i didn't realize what was going on until i walked away...

StiletoWispRed...stepping out on you is not cool...

BLackLiLy...no, i dont think he quite realized either...

BLackLiLy...and i think he had already been thinking about what we really were...

BLackLiLy...when i told him we werent going anywhere i guess she had made it pretty clear she was available...

BLackLiLy...i crashed his date tonight because i had to talk to him...

StiletoWispRed...did you?...

BLackLiLy...did i what?...

StiletoWispRed...absolutely positively have to talk to him at that specific moment...

BLackLiLy...i was worried about him...

There was another delay while Carina processed all of that.

StiletoWispRed...back off...

BLackLiLy...what, why?...

StiletoWispRed...you need to back off, youre being crazy...

BLackLiLy...but hes just going to keep dating this other girl...

StiletoWispRed...probably, and?...

Sarah paused and considered before answering.

BLackLiLy...and i want it to go back to how it was...

StiletoWispRed...it never goes back...

BLackLiLy...i thought it was it never GROWS back...

StiletoWispRed...deflect deflect deflect...

StiletoWispRed has machine guned you

BLackLiLy...where are you finding these machine guns?...

BLackLiLy...and what's with the spelling? do I have to see that every time?...

StiletoWispRed...only if you keep sucking and getting killed, told you it was a shit game, ppl hate it cuz theres only one of each type of gun per level...

BLackLiLy...well thats stupid, how are you typing so fast?...

StiletoWispRed...youre not using the onscreen keyboard are you? get one of the auxillary controllers, I cut mine up and strapped it to my forearm...

StiletoWispRed...theres a voice thing but figured that wasn't secure enough, never know who might have a sample from one of us, maybe we could get scramblers...

BLackLiLy...whos the crazy person? why can't we just stand still and chat?...

StiletoWispRed...then you wont learn nothing, and I'm def not telling you where the rocket launcher is...

StiletoWispRed has blown you up

Excessive amounts of blood and gore rained down where Sarah's character had once been standing and she respawned at a point on the map she didn't recognize.

BLackLiLy...thats disgusting...

StiletoWispRed...and this arena is too big for two ppl, youll never find it...

StiletoWispRed...frustrating when your partner doesn't share info with you isnt it?...

BLackLiLy...whys it have to be a big deal?...

StiletoWispRed...for him? would you prefer he not think of you as a big deal, just be a sex buddy?...

BLackLiLy...i was gonna imply we could start there, chickened out...

StiletoWispRed...you kinda implied a lot already, i love you but youre an idiot, who starts there and goes anywhere?, do you think he just wants a fling with you?...

BLackLiLy...im not ready for more than that...

BLackLiLy...not sure i ever will be...

StiletoWispRed...maybe you want different things, and thats ok too, but thats why you need to back off...

StiletoWispRed...and if he falls hard for new girl you get to watch...

StiletoWispRed...and if hes done with you hes done with you...

StiletoWispRed...you have to decide if you want to be someone ur not just to be what you think he wants...

There was a brief pause before the next message.

StiletoWispRed...or you could actually TALK to him...

BLackLiLy...why do i talk to YOU?...

StiletoWispRed...cuz im smart and stuff

StiletoWispRed...and actually dated real guys back when I was a real person...

StiletoWispRed...and to bask in my glory...

StiletoWispRed...BASK IN IT...

StiletoWispRed has blown you up

StiletoWispRed...GIBS!...

BLackLiLy...what?...

StiletoWispRed...short for giblets! thats what my COD buddy told me...

BLackLiLy...fine, gross but fine, speaking of BUDDIES howd your thing go...

StiletoWispRed...low blow, shows your frustration, its unattractive...

StiletoWispRed...when did we start talking about nothing but guys anyway?...

BLackLiLy...deflect deflect deflect...

StiletoWispRed...touche...

BLackLiLy...safe topic, now spill...

StiletoWispRed...he was nice and we didnt get near a bed or any flat surface or stop trying to come up with sex positions...

BLackLiLy...whats that leave?...

StiletoWispRed...surprisingly? talking, a lot, maybe fooled around a little, like i said he was nice, but i dont have to go there and couldnt see the point...

StiletoWispRed...im worth more than that...

Sarah smiled at her friend's answer and the idea of her thinking of herself as worth anything after so many years of thinking the opposite.

BLackLiLy...so you split?...

StiletoWispRed...no, stayed for a bit, talked him through it, apologized for making him think there was a real connection there...

Sarah winced at that, seeing her words reflected back on the game screen.

StiletoWispRed...he was good about it, gonna mostly let him be as long as hes good, not that one guy makes a big dent...

Wow. It was nice to hear her friend talking about a mission like a human being and wondered what other changes she was going through. She'd have to spend more time talking to her about what was going on with her next time.

BLackLiLy...just how many greek ones are there?...

Sarah asked, knowing that Carina would know she was talking about shipping magnates.

StiletoWispRed...lots, greeks have like a quarter of the world, then scandinavians -represent!- and taiwan...

BLackLiLy...your mormor was swedish that doesnt make you scandinavian...

StiletoWispRed...your father was an asshole that doesnt, oh wait...

Sarah smiled before she typed it knowing Carina liked to win her little game and it had almost become an 'I love you' between them

BLackLiLy...fuck you...

StiletoWispRed...TAH DAH!...

StiletoWispRed has blown you up

BLackLiLy...youre impossible...

StiletoWispRed...you cant see me so just know im taking a bow, here ill moon walk for you instead...

Carina's avatar appeared from behind cover, positioned herself in front of Sarah's, turned sideways and walked backward several steps. She then turned its head toward Sarah's digital self, knelt and stood back up jerkily, repeated the action several times quickly, then spun 180 degrees and repeated the sequence. It was stupid but it made Sarah smile.

BLackLiLy...thanks I needed that...

StiletoWispRed...wish I could do more...

StiletoWispRed...hes a puppy, just try to be civil and see what happens, k?...

BLackLiLy...K, still with your coffee?...

Sarah asked to check that Carina was still in the same location as her most recent coffee purchase.

StiletoWispRed...yep, but moving on soon...

StiletoWispRed...gotta jet, watch the usuals for another game night, might be a couple months, and I know where to find you...

BLackLiLy...unfortunately...

StiletoWispRed...his loss...

The message 'StiletoWispRed has left the arena' showed at the top of the screen and an icon Sarah didn't recognize appeared in the middle of the screen. It looked a little bit like...

unknown player has killed you with a grenade

She smiled and shook her head even as she muttered it out loud.

"Bitch."

.

* * *

.

Sarah closed out the game and shut down the system, contemplating the advice her friend had given. She wasn't ready to make her intentions clear or shine the light of day on her fears and concerns. It had been comfortable existing within the bubble of a cover relationship with a man who deserved more than than she was willing or able to give.

He could have taken what she was willing to give - indulge her (and himself) in a purely physical relationship - but he wanted more. Maybe he was even foolish enough to have wanted more with her. How could she really be upset about that? If anything, she was pleased that he respected her that much. Enough that he wouldn't 'take advantage of her', as he likely saw it.

He may even have _still_ been hers for the taking. She could easily get between him and the new girl but that would require facing her demons. Sharing truths. Being transparent in a way she had been raised and trained not to be. To be someone she is not. Or to lie about what she is. If she could bring herself to think of him as an adversary of any kind, he would be the most terrifying one she had ever faced purely because of what merely engaging with him demanded she admit about herself.

She opened her laptop and her report and considered what she had found in her very thorough background check of the young deli owner. Louise Palone had competed in gymnastics in her youth with no notable success but a lot of persistence, graduated high school with honors, earned a degree in business management and tacked on a hospitality management minor, likely when she figured out what she intended to do.

She worked multiple jobs, mostly in food service, and saved a large portion of her earnings that she had later sunk into the deli. She had a small business loan for the remainder but didn't look too overextended. She hired people with a lot of experience and this first location was so successful that she had secured a second location in Glendale that she was planning to open early next year.

Lou had dated a couple of guys in high school and a few since, with Stavros and another guy that Stavros had apparently scared off being the last two. Nothing that would indicate that she was fickle in any way or dated guys without intending to at least entertain the idea of something long-term with them. All were relatively long relationships from five months to almost two years with Stavros and there was no reason to believe that any of them had overlapped in a way that implied any infidelity.

Sarah was impressed that Lou hadn't used any money from Stavros. Surely, with his family money and need for control, he would have offered. Clearly she hadn't asked. Maybe he hadn't even known. She probably considered that he would have done it just to keep his hooks into her, completely unlike someone like Chuck who - if he had the money - would have offered it freely, probably with his only condition being 'pay me back when you can'.

Lou had every indication of being a motivated, determined entrepreneur with a relatively balanced life who had once been involved with a questionable guy and now ran a thriving, growing business. Of course Sarah was jealous. Jealous of a life unencumbered by lies and death and jealous of a freedom to take what she desired without fear of destroying it. Jealous of a normal person's ability to hold a butterfly in her hand without crushing it.

But as for Lou herself? If it weren't for her current romantic interest it would have been hard for Sarah to find anything to dislike about the woman.

There was a bible in Sarah's nightstand drawer with two pressed flowers between its pages. Coincidentally, one of them - the one she had inexplicably chosen to keep after her first date with Chuck - Sarah had noticed was a commonly appearing entry on flower deliveries from any guy who had dated the deli owner for more than a couple of months.

Anyone who hung around dating Lou for any period of time ended up sending her gerber daisies.

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA, the next day

.

Chuck was still struggling to leave one moderately coherent apology message for Lou, "If you get a sec, you can..." when he was distracted by the familiar short skirt and long, familiar but not-familiar-enough legs, "You can call me back. Okay."

Sarah heard Chuck end his voicemail as he stood to greet her, though he closed his eyes and cringed after he said "Buh-bye" and ended the call.

"Won't call you back?" she asked, knowing he and Lou had not spoken since she had interrupted their date at Club Ares last night.

"I, uh... Yeah. I think her voice-mail is broken. It's very, very common."

"I wanted to apologize for last night. I did hear some things from Demetrios that I didn't like but," she closed her eyes and sighed a little - she had told herself she wasn't going to make excuses - before opening them and continuing, "I suppose I jumped the gun a little. I didn't mean to interfere with your date."

She wasn't sure that was entirely true but she _was_ sorry for doing it.

"Yeah, not sure it qualifies as a date when you're bugged with CIA microphones and infiltrating an arms importer, but, hey, I'm new at this," Chuck said with that adorable crooked little half-grin of his.

That was her Chuck. The one who made everything easier on everyone else. He was a little upset about not being able to talk to and salvage things with the foul-mouthed midget but this was him. Sweet and smart and easy going. He might not be perfect - no one was - but he was the closest she had ever dreamed she could meet.

"Well, it's hard to have a real relationship in this line of work," Sarah offered, as though she had any experience in real relationships.

"Apparently, it's hard to have a fake one, as well," Chuck countered, looking at her meaningfully but with an intention she couldn't decipher.

For a moment she wondered if he could tell that it had been hard to relegate whatever was going on under their cover to the description of 'fake'. He was looking right through her again in that way only he could but that he didn't trust. Like he knew her heart or at least suspected something was amiss. She remembered her promise to a dying Ellie - who had thankfully recovered - that Chuck would one day be happy.

She had never thought it would be her who was free to help make that happen. And maybe it would take more than some tiny little annoyingly normal and forthright deli owner to make him enduringly happy but neither had she thought she would have to watch it happen with someone else. At least not so soon.

"Well, if it's any consolation," she began, deciding to dare to admit that very thing - that it hadn't been fake at all - if he was listening close enough, "I never felt like our time together was work. You've been nothing but good to me."

As she turned and walked away, his one thought was, even though it wasn't going to be him, even though he wasn't up to her standard, Sarah deserved someone as amazing as she herself was.

"How could I be anything less?" he good-naturedly replied to her back with a slight shrug, as though the world were overbrimming with honest, kind men like him.

_You can't_, she thought as she stopped and turned to face him again, _that's why you deserve to be happy_.

"Oh, uh, gerber daises," she offered, clarifying when he looked at her questioningly, "Lou's favorite."

"How do you know that?"

"CIA. I had them check flower deliveries to her addresses from the last five years."

"Good tip."

She knew from the smile he offered - more at her resourcefulness than the information itself - that with a few honest words she could have him back. As if she ever had him before. If only she could just face her fears. Instead she took the easier route.

But the easier route wasn't exactly easy. Even so, she could do this. She could watch him be happy with someone else. It's not as though she was free to pursue anything, like she wouldn't be reassigned leaving him to the mercy of Casey alone or any ruthless replacement that Graham might send. As though anything between them could ever really go anywhere even if they managed to fool her superiors for a while.

She did the only thing she could do.

She reflected his smiled back at him, just as melancholy and full of regret, turned and walked away.

.

* * *

.

064: Beneath the Wreckage of Dishonesty

.

Trunk of Stavros Demetrios' Audi, en route to Port of Los Angeles; nearly sunset the next day

.

The pin. The God damn pin. Stavros had held it up, taunting Chuck, as he had their arms and feet bound and herded them into the trunk of the car where they were currently riding. She was facing away from Chuck, her back up against him as they had recently laid in his bed but with an unwelcome curtain of anger - and for her part, regret - between them.

This was all her fault because of a snarky little decision to be a tiny little thorn in Chuck's side because he decided to pursue someone who indicated pursuit was welcome. Just that one tiny act motivated by jealousy or hurt or regret or longing had caused Chuck to be discovered.

It just showed how dangerous emotions are in their unconventional lives. They had no place. She had done something that had put them both in danger and she saw no means of escape. At least not just yet.

She and Casey really had spent most of the previous night being reprimanded for the empty shipping container. And they really did suspect Lou of involvement in the smuggling operation. Sarah had tried to stay away but, when Beckman and Graham had asked about Chuck's whereabouts and then insisted that one of them ensure his security, Casey had just handed her a camera with a telephoto lens as she automatically headed for the door.

She tried not to react to Chuck's self-congratulations in the mirror this morning - really, why was he trying so hard to force this to work? He had spent as much time groveling as he had spent on dates with the woman. Sarah was no expert but even she knew that was a bad sign.

She also didn't react when Chuck, whether he realized he meant it or not, basically said he would adhere to it if they said he couldn't date for national security reasons. Most of her said that such a request was ridiculously unfair. A small part of her wanted to say that was _exactly_ why he couldn't date anyone. Or at least anyone but her.

She was a little angry when he seemed to accuse her of fabricating the accusations against Lou - calling it pathetic and beneath her, so certain that she was acting out of jealousy - but rather than feeling victorious about the evidence itself or indignant about his accusation she wondered why she hadn't thought of sabotaging her like that and immediately felt guilty for her pettiness.

It was a little gratifying to leave the photographic evidence of Lou conspiring with her ex-boyfriend for him to review. But it would have been far more fulfilling to have not felt such jealousy when watching him kiss her goodnight at her door. Or to have not felt such relief that Chuck had left immediately after that rather than going in for the proverbial 'cup of coffee'. Or to have not sulked in her car long enough to see Lou leave her apartment and then follow her as much out of curiosity as suspicion.

She was just glad that Casey hadn't spilled the beans that she had taken the surveillance photos and she wasn't really inclined to hear Chuck out when he spoke accusingly into her ear.

"Why did you come in? I had the situation entirely under control."

"Yeah, I can see that," she snapped over her shoulder. If she hadn't come in, Chuck would still be bound in the trunk of a car, just by himself. They had taken her gun and found one knife but not the others. Even though she too was bound, he had a much better chance of survival since she _did_ come in.

"So, I assume you have a plan to get us out of this mess?" he asked. And that pissed her off too - saying he had it all under control but assuming she could fix it - even though her mere presence meant she likely could. He was lucky she came to see what was wrong when his listening device failed and that she was here now to help him and yet he _still_ didn't want to be around her.

"Right now Casey's tracking your GPS device in your watch. A SWAT team will be here any minute," she answered plainly - stifling all other reactions for now.

"Yeah, about the watch... I may have trashed it when Lou was confessing about smuggling uninspected deli meat."

"Seriously?" Chuck was as shocked at how quickly Sarah flipped herself around to face him in the confined space as he was unsettled by the glare she was giving him. He couldn't have turned around like that unbound without a second person in the trunk but she had done it like it was nothing. He didn't think commenting on her flexibility was very wise just then and didn't care for how indignant she was being about him trying to protect someone from a multi-agency sting operation when the woman was just skirting a few rules about cured meats.

"Lou was incriminating herself and I didn't want her getting into trouble."

She hadn't expected influencing him into separating himself from her emotionally would be a guarantee of his safety but she hadn't thought it would be so completely ineffective either. He seemed hard wired to sacrifice himself for other people. She had tried to keep him safely away from her and he _still_ got himself into trouble by trying to protect his stupid smuggler girlfriend.

"Always the romantic, huh, Chuck?"

Damn it. He had tried being that type of selfless supporter for her but little miss spy didn't appreciate it. Or didn't appreciate it from him. Or maybe didn't appreciate him doing selfless things for _other_ people.

"Jealous?"

Well, there was no way she was going to admit that. "It was foolish. Do you really think the CIA is interested in a deli-meat smuggler?"

Never mind that _he_ was interested in a deli-meat smuggler. And she was interested in him. At least until this latest of many spy-related fuck ups in their very new relationship. _They_ were the ones who had jumped the gun over a crate full of sopprasetta and...other meats he couldn't quite identify in their non-sandwich states. He didn't need reminding that he wasn't up to he standard. "Well, excuse me if I'm not Mr. Perfect-Spy. We can't all be Bryce Larkin, now can we?"

This again? No. Bryce wouldn't have stuck his neck out like that. She wouldn't have worried as much about him getting into a sticky situation. Because he was a dangerous, trained assassin in his own right, just like her instead of someone like Chuck. And Chuck thought that meant she preferred...oh that's rich from someone who had been rubbing _her_ nose in the fact that he was dating a new girl who was all real and honest - even though _she_ was sneaking off to meet her shady ex at the docks. Even knowing that Bryce was still a soft spot for Chuck, she was mad enough to spit out a spiteful "Oh, who's jealous now?"

Chuck was. Basically had been to some degree as long as he had known Bryce. And more since he had known about him with her though he knew it was petty and wouldn't admit it.

"Me, jealous of you and Bryce? Never."

God, she didn't want to fight with him. But she didn't want to retreat either.

"You said everything you want to say?"

No. Not by a long shot.

"More or less."

"Good. Now, shut up. You're sucking up all the air."

She whipped her body around in two quick moves to face away from him again and work on loosening the ropes around her arms. A week ago, him spooning her from behind felt like the most comfortable place she could imagine. Over these past few weeks they had come to talk about almost everything and he made her feel special. Now, pressed against her back and her bound arms wrenched behind her, even in the confines of the trunk, he couldn't have felt farther away.

And she missed him.

.

* * *

.

Chuck regretted that both she and Casey had seen him preening in the mirror this morning. He knew congratulating himself in the mirror gave the impression that more had happened last night than actually had. In truth, he had been referring to managing to turn things around with Lou. Anything more than that would have been a miracle and he suddenly - in that moment - didn't know how he felt about Sarah thinking he may have slept with Lou. He hadn't even decided if _he_ wanted to yet, aside from the pretty-girl-interested-in-me-so-why-not desire to.

He had made up with Lou to some degree at the deli when he brought her the flowers Sarah had suggested. She made him work for it though. Making him take a number multiple times until the deli was empty of customers from the lunch rush. After an exchange on her favorite subject which roughly amounted to soft core sandwich porn she kissed him in that slightly too aggressive way he had experienced on his first date with her that inescapably left him comparing her to Sarah and how, even when she kissed aggressively, there was a soft vulnerability to her that he had always found fascinating and contradictory. Before he had been forced to wonder if it was just some advanced technique.

It was completely unfair to Lou that he had been comparing her to Sarah ever since he foolishly ran to Lou seeking some fragment of normalcy in his life. He felt terribly guilty about it so really couldn't blame her for continuing to test him as she only agreed to dinner first saying she didn't want to be out all night.

He managed to get her to relax over dinner and eventually got her to agree to a movie. He had suggested _American Gangster_ or the new Coen Brothers movie but she had wanted to see the new Tom Cruise movie or something about cholera - which sounded kinda gross. He may have steered her a little when he joked that Tom Cruise still owed him nine dollars for seeing _Vanilla Sky_ in the theater so she, of course, picked that one.

He would have rather sat through the Vince Vaughan Christmas movie. This one was a yawner. One that would have been improved immensely by including actual lions and possibly even lambs instead of the metaphorical lions and lambs of the title. A comment Lou didn't appreciate, which he was sure would have coaxed at least that crooked little grin from Sarah.

He also really didn't need the visual of two soldiers completely out of ammunition committing suicide by Taliban by waving empty weapons at them. Given recent operational discussions with Casey, it was just another possible worst-case-scenario tactic he added to his memory bank.

Lou had stopped him from sprinkling milk duds on his popcorn which Sarah had never done even though he had noticed her cringe and stopped doing it with her. He wondered whether Lou was being deliberately high maintenance or if it was a byproduct of the constant disruptions from his spy life that cause her to react that way.

But seeing those photos of her conspiring with her ex - even though it now turned out it was just a bit of food inspection circumvention and a philosophical disagreement with the FDA over cured meats - shattered his illusion. His biggest reason for dating Lou was that he thought she was so honest. But the very ex-boyfriend she had warned him about - the one who she warned no one wanted in their head - the one who had thrown them in this freaking car trunk at gunpoint - was the very person she was sneaking around to carry out her minor smuggling infractions with.

Maybe that wasn't an insurmountable thing on its own but, having argued with her more than he had dated her, it suddenly didn't seem like such a certainty that she was worth the effort.

And he did feel like a fool. He had drowned his GPS tracker in a glass of - whatever the hell Lou had been drinking while waiting for Stavros to deliver her crate full of goodies - to kill the listening device inside. He had really made a bad prioritization decision to prevent Lou getting in trouble for a few pounds of cured meats while the team was investigating a possible high-explosive, or even WMD, shipment.

Running to someone who was interested just because he was hurt may have been more foolish than compromising the mission by disabling his tracker.

Sarah was right. He really was a fool. No wonder she couldn't take him seriously. He certainly was not cut out for this spy life.

He was not and never would be a super spy like Bryce Larkin.

.

* * *

.

065: How We Meet Our Doom

.

Port of Los Angeles, unused storage area; after sunset

.

There was a good chance they were going to die. If his safety wasn't a priority she could probably save herself but she didn't think that way anymore. She couldn't afford to with Chuck.

It really all boiled down to her pettiness and his goodness. Stavros had noticed the pin and recognized it immediately. Chuck had wanted to avoid getting someone in trouble over a petty charge. She wasn't sure how Bryce had slipped into their argument. Clearly Chuck wasn't completely over the thought that she had once been involved with her former partner and they had fought over other people instead of formulating a plan.

They were oil and water.

She knew Stavros' father, Yari, meant business as he approached with a power drill. She knew from experience what an effective tool it was and she wasn't the one who left those experiences with holes in her. Her training kicked in as she steeled herself and clammed up.

Luckily, Chuck did the opposite of what an agent was supposed to do when Yari said he intended to torture _her_ rather than Chuck and then handed the drill to one of his men. He had rightly guessed that it would break Chuck. It just didn't happen in the way Yari expected.

It was the threat to her that spurred Chuck into action. As Yari's thug approached her and squeezed the trigger of the drill, spinning the bit menacingly, Chuck furiously scanned the room until she saw that pinched look that meant he had found a trigger. Then another. And another. She saw more pops from the Intersect than those he said out loud, picking and choosing what he revealed in an attempt to set Yari's men against each other.

She knew the toll these chained flashes took on him. She wondered how much it hurt. How much he hurt himself to spare her from torture.

A Patek Phillipe chronograph on the wrist of the thug holding the drill gave Chuck something he could use. A wanted statement for a Margos Yeremyan, the man with the drill, and what he had done to a family in Armenia.

"You killed a whole family outside Yerevan. You stole their heirlooms, and you sold all of them on the Russian black market except for that watch," Chuck blurted out rapidly.

"How you know that?" the thug lowered the drill as he asked.

Chuck was letting the flashes flow unchecked. He had plucked Yeremyan's story from a dozen other unhelpful ones. A foolhardy glance at Sarah's stoic face while allowing the Intersect to run free caused it to find its way into his rapid-fire visions.

The hummingbird.

His defenses were down and it was followed by a somewhat unclear surveillance shot of the only features visible through a black balaclava. The shot was discarded as useless by analysts working the case but it was clear enough for him.

Those ever so slightly different almond-shaped, blue eyes and the slightly different arch to her eyebrows. He had studied them enough that he would know them anywhere even without the Intersect. But it was the Intersect that juxtaposed a glimpse of that woman carrying a gigantic sniper rifle after leaping a gap between buildings with reports of a suspect's escape from the scene of a murdered military official from some third world country whose name he didn't even recognize.

He had to abandon that chain of flashes or he could have dug deeper but the last he saw was a graphic photo of the official with a gigantic hole in his chest where his heart once was.

He moved to the other thug looming over them and a tattoo on his forearm have him the trigger he needed. Financial statements and a Europol report.

"Your name is Vladimir Snell. Last year, you were paid $40,000 to kill a man named Leo Koloff," he blurted as before.

This one hit the mark. "You told me we were paid twenty," said the man holding the drill.

Sarah had watched Chuck's face as he cringed from the strain, then watched the exchange as the two men seemed to be falling for Chuck's attempt to sow discord. She didn't know if it was a calculated move or desperation but it was brilliant either way. It might only give them a moment or two but she had worked her wrist ropes free enough to slip a small throwing knife out of the sleeve of her jacket and she was slowly slicing through the ropes that bound her arms.

Her gun was well out of reach on a table off to their right, past Chuck, but she pulled the toe triggers in her boots and a two inch blade extended from the toe of her left boot and the heel of her right. Her legs were bound around her calves and it would require some obvious squirming to get in a position to snag one blade or both to pop the rope. Luckily, the two thugs were cooperating.

"He's lying. He'll say anything to get out of trouble," said Thug Two, the one who had lied about their assassination compensation.

"He knows about Yerevan. He knows everything. And you," Thug One one raised a pistol with his non-drill hand, "owe me money."

An only mildly annoyed Yari Demetrios put an end to the argument himself by casually shooting Snell in the head before Yeremyan could even aim properly at him. "Well, that settles that."

It hadn't been quite enough to set off a donnybrook but it did buy a little time - and a distraction for Sarah to squirm her leg bindings loose - as Yari turned his attention back to his captives. "So. If you will kindly tell me who else knows about our shipment."

Just then another less burly associate of Yari's entered and announced "The package is here," giving Sarah the opportunity she needed to snag her heel blade on the rope even as she had nearly sliced through her wrist ropes. "Berth 19," the new entrant continued as he turned the tablet toward them all causing another flash from Chuck. "We've got five minutes till it expires, sir."

Sarah noticed Chuck flash on the tablet this new man was holding and the subsequent look of terror that overtook Chuck's face.

"All right, let's go," Yari ordered. "We'll just have to kill them."

Then all hell broke loose.

The thug named Yeremyan approached her and she leapt from her chair with a kick of a bladed boot that caught his jawbone, barely missing the arteries and veins just underneath. Casey burst in with likely the same SWAT team they had recruited yesterday for the container search causing a glorious distraction with a gun fight.

She pulled Chuck down and off to the side, out of the line of fire, and cut his legs free first so he could run as he announced what he had gleaned from his flash on the tablet. "There's a weapon in the shipment. I think it's some kind of chemical bomb. We have to get to it before it blows."

Casey heard him over the gunfire and offered to cover their retreat. "I'll hold the fort. You go get the bomb. Go!"

Sarah retrieved her gun from the table on the way out and cut Chuck's hands free just before they exited the building. "The bomb's at Berth 19," she reminded herself out loud in case Chuck needed to correct her, then realized he was running with her toward it.

"Chuck, I want you to get as far away from here as possible."

"I'm coming with you," he stubbornly replied.

"No, Chuck," she had barely saved him out of a combination of luck, her resourcefulness, his clever distractions and Casey's persistence. She wasn't going to lose him again. "You're not going anywhere near a live bomb."

She should have remembered what Ellie had told her about his running, or even how he had evaded both her and Casey that first night - another day, another bomb - as she rushed to catch up to him as he hauled ass to Berth 19.

She was fast. He was faster.

.

* * *

.

Berth 19, Port of Los Angeles

.

The crate they found was already prepped for disassembly with its top suspended by chains from the ceiling.

"Here," she tossed him a crowbar from a nearby collection of tools. "Help me out."

They pried loose and dropped one wall of the crate and were both dumbstruck by the sheer size of the weapon, the digital timer showing less than a minute remaining. Chuck spoke first as Sarah removed the cover plate under the timer to reveal a bundle of wires.

"Thaaaaaaaat's a really really big bomb... Okay. Okay, Intersect. Flash. Show me how to do this."

"Did you flash?"

"No. Nothing." He didn't know if there was just nothing in the intersect for this particular device or if he had blown his flasher out or sprained his brain trying to set Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum against each other. Either way, the intersect didn't look like it was going to save them this time. "Come on! Come on, come on, come on, baby, don't fail me now. Come on."

"Okay, Chuck, that's enough. Run. I'm going to try and stay and defuse it."

"No, I'm not leaving you."

"Go. That is an order."

Even if it crossed his mind to leave Sarah Walker here to die alone - which it hadn't - he had seen every Harrison Ford movie ever made. He wasn't going to outrun the blast wave on this thing. When Force 10 was going to blow the dam and realized they had no time left to evacuate before it blew they sat down, watched their own bomb tick down and had a smoke. He didn't have a cigarette to offer Sarah but they didn't run around in a pointless panic. And neither would he.

"No."

"I. Said. Go!" Sarah barked and, to both their surprise, she pulled her gun from the small of her back and pointed it at his head.

"Oh, I see. So you're going to shoot me to prevent me from getting blown up? That's a great plan."

"Why are you so stubborn?" was the question that burst forth from her lips but not the only one flitting through her cluttered mind. She tried to grasp the other questions: Why can't you listen? Why can't you trust me? Why do you have to push? Why did you have to come with me - to follow me - to _lead_ me - to another God damn bomb? Why do you insist that I'm worth saving?

Why won't you live?

"Actually, I consider this a rare moment of courage. I don't know where it's coming from, I guess you just bring out the worst in me."

"And you in me," she responded out of reflex having tucked her gun away realizing this was a fight she wasn't going to win. And like many other things they had said to each other recently, neither of their comments was true. This world - her world - brought out the very best in him. Whereas it had brought out the very worst in her.

Yet _he_ made her want to offer up the best of what was left of her.

The bomb timer began beeping and they both looked over to see that the timer was down to ten seconds. Despite all her best efforts, rather than safely soaring away from her he had rolled all the way down - tumbled from the sky - full speed, head first, into the ground.

For her.

.

* * *

.

00:00:10... 00:00:09... 00:00:08...

.

Chuck made a subtle move toward Sarah and thought better of it, stopping and saying only "It was nice knowing you."

He memorized every facet of her face and closed his eyes. Wondered whether it would be so fast that he wouldn't feel anything. Or if there would be a few moments of terror as his mind registered the white-hot, excruciating few moments of pain as his body and hers were incinerated alive or ripped apart by the blast or both.

He closed his eyes because he didn't know whether his dying mind and body would be able to process the last images it witnessed. He didn't want his last image of her to be one of her being burned or torn apart, or in pain of any kind.

He wanted to remember her like this - whole and beautiful and fiery and wild.

His only regret that his last few words to her were out of anger and frustration or a totally inadequate sanitized goodbye, instead of telling her how singularly special and amazing she was. That he had seen some of her worst parts and they did not define her. That if he couldn't have her it was just as well that he die here because anyone else would pale in comparison.

He waited for the crash and the sensation was not at all what he was expecting.

.

* * *

.

00:00:09... 00:00:08... 00:00:07...

.

Sarah watched him close his eyes for what would be the last time. Watched the calm come over his face. She wished they could have been more. Wished she hadn't lied to him. Wished she didn't have to maintain this distance between them.

And then she realized...she didn't.

She lunged forward, grabbed hold of his beautiful face with both hands, tilted her head to the left and kissed him as though it was her last act on Earth.

Because it was.

.

* * *

.

00:00:08... 00:00:07... 00:00:06...

.

Chuck's eyes popped open in surprise. He clutched her tightly around the waist as she tilted her head to the other side and he closed his eyes and kissed her back passionately. Her gun was in the way and it prompted him to drink in the lines of her face with his hand as he kissed her deeply, trying his best to show her everything they could have been.

.

* * *

.

00:00:07... 00:00:06... 00:00:05...

.

Sarah felt his left hand move up to cradle her face. So gentle yet so passionate. So perfect. A life time of lost chances poured into one last beautiful moment.

She reached around the back of his neck and ran her fingers through his hair before gripping him tightly by his hair and pulling him more tightly to her.

She never wanted to let go.

.

* * *

.

00:00:06... 00:00:05... 00:00:04...

.

Chuck felt her hand move to the back of his head, pulling him in tighter. Needy and desperate. And he clutched her tighter, pressing her body against his and lifting her up to his full height. No matter what happened next he was never going to let go.

.

* * *

.

00:00:05... 00:00:04... 00:00:03...

.

She felt the delightful squeeze of their bodies together, holding her tightly, feeling neither suffocated or otherwise desperate to flee. He had lifted her up so that only her toes were touching the ground - or maybe she was floating - maybe they were already dead. His warmth enveloped her. And she knew, for the first time in her life, and the last, what it felt like to be loved.

.

* * *

.

00:00:04... 00:00:03... 00:00:02...

.

He felt the passion or her kiss and knew - _knew_ \- she had lied to him. He didn't know why. He didn't know what she hoped to achieve. But this was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

She fisted his shirt with the hand trapped between them and he knew - _knew_ \- what a mistake he had made believing her she she said there was nothing between them. What a mistake it had been to break up with her and to push her into the decisions that led to it.

.

* * *

.

00:00:03... 00:00:02... 00:00:01...

.

She fisted his shirt and reveled in the sensation of his lips and tongue dancing with her own, both needy and desperate but neither seeking to take control of this moment. She thought of ripping his shirt off of him, she wanted nothing between them in these last precious moments - lies or clothing - if only there were time for all the words and deeds that she had been avoiding...

.

* * *

.

00:00:02... 00:00:01... 00:00:00...

.

Sarah was pressed firmly against him - every point of contact its own amazing sensation. She melted into him and he recognized that hidden vulnerability he had detected before. There was no reason to doubt it now.

It felt like they were built for each other and he only wished they had more time to...

...Time...

.

* * *

.

00:00:01... 00:00:00... 00:00:00...

.

...there was no time for that...

There shouldn't have been enough time for any of this.

She froze and he stopped kissing her an instant later his lips still closed around her lower lip and, as he reluctantly pulled away, her lip slipped from between his.

He looked into her eyes incredulously for a moment, reassuring himself that she was alive, before looking back to the bomb but she couldn't look away from his neck, his breath heaving and pulse visible. Delightfully alive. She wanted desperately to dive back in and continue.

She looked as well to confirm that the bomb had not detonated, other than obliterating the carefully constructed wall she had built between the two of them.

They looked back at each other and her eyes flicked over his face, still alive and whole and enticingly out of breath and she tried to defuse the situation.

"Well, the good news is, we're alive," she tried to slow her own breathing. "And the bad news is that this is kind of an uncomfortable moment right now," she tested with a slight sputter and hitch in her ragged breaths.

"It's completely comfortable on my end. Just saying."

She saw him studying her - putting the pieces together - discrediting her lies in his own mind. He knew. It would be so much harder now to keep him at a distance to be sure he never did something like this again.

He paused for a moment and watched her face change. If anything she was more panicked now than she was before the timer hit all zeros.

Why would someone who had kissed him like _that_, now look so utterly terrified?

"I don't understand..." he began as they both looked at the bomb and the flashing timer.

.

00:00:00... 00:00:00... 00:00:00... _CLICK_... 12:00:00... 11:59:59...

.

When they heard the click, Chuck instinctively tried to shield her body with his, subtly nudging her partly behind him with his left arm as he took a half-step in front of her. She smiled at the complete futility and immense compassion of the gesture and then frowned at the implications as the new time stopped flashing and began counting down again.

It was everything that was wrong with the idea of the two of them together. He was the most important intelligence asset in the world. And he was the most important thing in her life. He shouldn't be shielding her from massive explosions regardless of the futility of it.

"It must be a dud," she offered. "The trigger reset to try again."

"For twelve hours? No, I don't think it _is_ a bomb. Something has... changed," there was a double-meaning in his voice and she looked up to find him looking back at her as he continued. "There was a switch of some kind. I heard it. But that's not what I mean...you said there wasn't...that we weren't-"

"What've we got?" Casey burst in - thankfully - and demanded to know what was happening.

"Time's up but no fire," was Sarah's simple response as she backed away from Chuck. "But something else is going on with it. Chuck doesn't think it's a weapon."

"Well, don't just stand there, Bartowski. Get the hell away from the giant tank of boom in case you're wrong. In fact, get out of here. Go home. We have a lot of clean up here and I don't want the tac team or the bomb squad getting a better look at you than they already have."

"Sarah. I think we really need to talk about-"

"You flashed a lot Chuck. I know it hurts," she interrupted and Chuck considered that here in front of Casey might not be the best time.

"No...I mean, yeah...but..."

"Here. Take the suburban," Casey said as he pressed the keys into his palm. "You okay to drive?" he then asked a he grabbed Chuck by both sides of his face and looked into his eyes to check his pupils. A decidedly different experience than Sarah doing the same.

By the time Chuck registered that thought and twisted away from Casey he turned to see Sarah walking quickly out the door. Casey grabbed him by the collar and marched him out to the Suburban, providing a replacement tracker watch and insisting that he get as far from the docks as possible, as quickly as possible.

Sarah had disappeared.

.

* * *

.

066: Clearing the Air / Message to No One (Day 56)

.

Lou's Gourmet Italian Deli, Buy More Plaza, the next morning

.

The door to the deli was propped open for morning deliveries and he stuck his head through with a tentative "Hey," before entering fully and continuing, "Look, I... I know that you are so sick of hearing this, but I'm really sorry if I've acted like a jerk."

"Chuck, I know who you really work for. That you're an undercover agent."

"How do you-"

"That guy Casey from the Food and Drug Administration came to see me, explained that you are an informant."

"Right. My cover has been blown. I'm an agent for the FDA."

"If you don't mind me saying, I'm not sure you're cut out for it. I don't think many cops go around apologizing to the people they investigate. Can I ask you a question?" she paused until Chuck signaled that she could. "This whole time, did you ever really like me?

"Honestly?"

"Yeah. Let's try that. For the first time since we've met."

He couldn't blame her for that. He knew what it was like to be lied to by someone you cared about. He even knew now what it was to find out that it wasn't all a lie after all.

The most honest answer was that she was great. A lot of the crazy situations had accounted for their misunderstandings and probably made the whole attempt at a relationship impossible but she had also never been the one he really wanted.

Now that the veil had been lifted and he knew that there was something between him and Sarah, more than just a duty to protect him and some compassion about his circumstances, even if it was a difficult road to travel, he couldn't see the point in pursuing someone else who, as great as she was...wasn't Sarah.

Maybe he was a little better suited to this whole agent thing than Lou thought because he could see a way to say that without making her feel second best.

"Lou, you are everything that I'm looking for. I just can't look right now."

"Well, thank you for being honest. The next time my phone breaks, I'm going to the Large Mart," she joked with a small smile.

"Oh, that...That hurts."

"And the next time that you're hungry-"

"No, no, no, no."

She just shook her head and finished her thought. "Take it to the Wienerlicious."

"I'm really going to miss the Chuck Bartowski," and he was pleased to glance up at the chalkboard and see it still there. Turkey, Munster, Egg Bread, Grilled, though it was now simply labeled 'the C.B.'

"So am I," she said with clear meaning of the man not the sandwich as she walked to the back room. She should have trusted her instincts. She had known all along that whatever was going on with Chuck and his ex, despite his assurances otherwise, he wasn't ready to be dating someone else just yet.

Chuck called after her. "Hey, Lou."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Secret agent or not that was the best kiss I've had in a long time."

And finally she offered one last, hopefully helpful thought, "She's a lucky girl."

.

* * *

.

Meanwhile...

Berth 19, Port of Los Angeles

.

She was numb. Absolutely numb.

.

Walker and Casey had waited outside, giving hourly debriefs to Beckman and Graham, while the bomb techs did their thing. It was after daybreak when they called an all clear.

The team lead informed them that the timer wasn't a fuse at all, it had been measuring an oxygen supply. Because that didn't sound ominous at all. The sound she and Chuck had heard and the reset of the counter had been the device switching over to an emergency reserve when the primary oxygen supply was depleted.

It was still unclear who had intended to take delivery of the contents but, whoever it was, had killed Yari Demetrios to prevent him talking to authorities. Stavros knew little of his father's dealings, the source of the shipment or its intended recipients but he would continue to be questioned as the government scrutinized every aspect of the Demetrios shipping business.

The team collapsed the remnants of the crate and carefully cracked open the casing of the device. Sarah and Casey stood back until the team hoisted the upper portion of the casing halfway to the ceiling and swung it clear from over their heads.

It was obvious as they stepped forward that what they thought had been a bomb casing contained a body. His face was covered with a breathing apparatus of some kind and intravenous tubes and a catheter made him look like an intensive care patient. He began to twitch and a medic cut between the two agents and the body speaking over his shoulder as he worked to remove the mask that was now preventing the man from breathing.

"Whatever they had him on slowed down his bodily functions. But the respirator stopped when we opened the hatch of the pod. It's some kind of suspended animation and all this would have to be maintained regularly but I have no idea how long he's been in here or how long he's been under."

The medic stepped to the side briefly and both agents peeked in as the man in the pod sucked in a ragged, unassisted first breath signifying his return to life.

Sarah noted the mop of hair and the once-familiar lines of his face and body first. "Oh, my god...Bryce."

While Casey noted the nearly healed bullet wound, not quite center mass, that should have been lethal but apparently had not been the kill shot he thought it had been.

"Didn't I kill him?"

.

* * *

.

She had stepped outside to get some air. Casey had followed her with a bottle of water and found her squatting with her rear against the wall of the warehouse and her head slouched forward, a curtain of golden hair obscuring her face.

Casey tapped her on the shoulder with the bottle. She looked up as she took it from him, said 'thanks' and laid it against the back of her neck for several seconds before sitting down hard, uncapping it and taking a sip.

Her phone, which Casey had retrieved for her from the makeshift torture room and returned to her earlier, rang as Casey crouched down beside her. She showed Casey the picture of Chuck on the display.

"Let's keep all this quiet for now. He doesn't need to know."

She nodded and took a few more sips as the ringing ceased but a chirp indicated that there was a voicemail.

"Better check that he's OK," she said and Casey moved to return to the warehouse where he had already ordered that Larkin be restrained prior to fully waking and a full medical team should be arriving any minute.

Sarah held the phone to her ear and heard Chuck speak. _"Hi, it's Chuck. Of course, it's me. It's me. It's Chuck."_ she couldn't help but smile at his hesitancy and silliness.

_"Look, I...I was just wondering if you wanted to go out on a date tonight,"_ at that Sarah schooled her expression and gave Casey the thumbs up he had been waiting for and he ducked back through the warehouse door as the message continued and she listened intently.

_"And by "date" I mean no GPS and no mikes and no chaperones. It'd just be us."_ Those last few words were laced with meaning.

Just us.

He knew. He knew she had pushed him away for a reason other than disinterest even if he didn't completely understand her motives. He knew that everything underneath their cover for the past two months hadn't been his imagination. And he wanted to see her. To go out with her like a real person.

Her walls were crumbling, her house of cards falling down.

_"I'm thinking maybe we could hit up Sbarro. They just named a new pizza after Morgan, and, uh, you know, I kind of wanted to support him. So Okay. Bye."_

She listened to his suggestion and the idea of Sbarro naming a pizza after Morgan for some reason was almost as absurd as her situation. She smiled and couldn't help a sputtering laugh that became a sputtering sob and finally a maniacal, sputtering laugh again.

She thought both men had moved on in very different ways. That one had betrayed her and their country and sent the other all of the nation's secrets for reasons known only to him pretty much extinguishing whatever she had once felt for him.

That the second man had given up on the idea of anything real with her. That she had effectively countered those ideas no matter how much she wanted them too and he no longer wanted her.

The first had died two months ago. She had watched as his casket was buried. Clearly just his casket. But she had mourned him. She had moved on.

The second had stayed with her so she wouldn't die alone. And the kiss they had shared had destroyed that deception, any interest in other women, apparently, and any willpower she had barely been able to gather to deny herself from him.

She rested her head against the wall and chuckled a couple more times before taking a few more sips of water.

One was back from the dead and one now knew a dangerous truth about her.

.

* * *

.

Maison 23, later that morning

.

She collapsed on her bed and just lay there staring up at the ceiling. Her mind a muddled mess. Visions of two men who had held her close and made her feel special at some points in her life. One who called her special for being like him, a killing machine and ruthless agent, giddily cheating death together. And that had been the basis of an almost frenzied lust between the two of them that fueled an on-off relationship over the majority of the past two years. They were the Bonnie and Clyde of the spy world.

The other man - who was more than a match for her wits - made her laugh. Made her feel special with his words or a smile. A kind gesture or a stolen touch. Or a torrid frantic last kiss, needfully clutching her close as they both prepared to be blown to bits. Together. A passionate embrace and kiss that rivaled... surpassed... anything she had ever known. When she was with him, she felt like a part of the human race again.

She thought about showering before getting a few hours of sleep but she had to get some of this out of her head. Just a week before she had confided to the video recorder of a breakup that was only fake because she sold the idea that the relationship had been fake. Now the truth - at least some of it - was out in the open and she would have to find an entirely different path forward. She pressed 'record' and confessed to the camera lens.

"Day 56: Chuck and I were defusing a bomb today and there was a moment where we were sure we were going to die. He closed his eyes... And I kissed him. _I_ kissed _him_."

She scoffed at herself before continuing.

"Of course we didn't die," she formed a tight-lipped smile and raised her arms out in a small shrug. "He switched gears from the deli girl - his real relationship experiment - and wants to go out with me. 'Just us' he said. He's going to want answers and I..."

She turned more wistful as she considered her answers "I don't know what to say. That there's a reason that I pushed him away but it's not because I don't feel something too? That it's not him, it's me?"

She chuckled at herself before considering the most significant thing that happened in a day of significant things.

"He wouldn't leave me. To die alone. He wouldn't leave. Not even to save himself."

She paused as she considered that simple, amazing fact. And then whispered it to the camera.

"He stayed."

She was alone in the world. Everyone left her. And she knew everyone left him. Or it seemed that way. He had friends. Probably more than he knew. A small sliver of family. But he wouldn't let her die alone.

The other pressing issue was the last person who had left her.

"And Bryce is back. Back from the dead. In a medical facility lockdown until they can revive him. He's pulled off some great escapes before but this... I thought he was gone forever and I can't quite believe it's him."

She sat quite still for a few seconds.

"I think it would be best if I just avoid him for a while and get my head straight."

She realized she wasn't sure which one she meant she should avoid. Bryce had always had a pull on her and Chuck's was just as strong, if not stronger. Her phone rang and she sighed and turned off the recorder and checked to see Casey's sneering picture - taken by Chuck, of course - before answering.

"Walker." She couldn't be bothered to confirm her secure encryption.

"You decent?" Apparently neither could Casey.

"More or less," she answered, though she really wasn't. She would want to shower and change if he needed her to go anywhere that required keeping up appearances of retaining one's sanity.

"You might wanna get back to the lab. There's been a development." Sarah had seen Bryce into the secret underground lab in downtown LA along with Casey and a four-person CIA medical team. Bryce had not been responsive and they wondered if something had gone wrong with his drug supply in the stasis chamber or if there were any brain damage. Last she saw him they were taking him for a CAT scan.

"What is it?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Your boyfriend's waking up."

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA, that afternoon

.

It had been a busy morning.

.

Chuck had tried to leave another voicemail with Sarah after not hearing from her last night and the Weinerlicious being closed all day. Well, he had actually succeeded in leaving the message itself, it just consisted of some rather unflattering comments from Morgan. She knew Morgan better than most so hopefully that wasn't too catastrophic but he had been having just the worst luck with the voicemail of the women in his life lately.

He had tried to explain to Morgan - and talk through it himself - how the winds had changed with regard to Sarah and him possibly having something meaningful between them. But Morgan had been distracted by an inappropriate by any measure workplace display of PDA with Anna.

He clearly had his work cut out for him in defusing the tension between Morgan, Anna and his sister Ellie, an unwitting participant in this love triangle. But Thanksgiving dinner was a good potential back up plan for when he finally spoke with Sarah again.

He had been planning how to address the situation since last night and continued to do so throughout Big Mike's annual Black Friday de-motivational pep-talk. Big Mike had tasked the training to Morgan - which meant, by default - it would largely fall to him but Morgan pointed out what he had been waiting for - hoping for - all day.

"Hey, relax, Chuck," Morgan said with a smile. "Things are, uh... Things are looking up for you."

He gestured toward the door and said something else Chuck didn't hear.

Because she was here.

She looked a little different. A little tired, maybe. He suspected she hadn't slept much if at all. Hair teased out a little and wearing a very flattering brown tunic thingy but she looked incredibly serious. He moved to greet her in the center aisle but she stopped short so he tried to lighten the mood.

"I don't...I don't want to play Beckman here, but if you don't start answering my calls, then super secret spy resource Chuck Bartowski does kind of go to waste," he smiled.

She offered no reaction whatsoever other than asking "Did you flash on something?"

"No. No, I was... I was calling about... other stuff. You didn't happen to listen to my messages?"

"Chuck, we have to talk."

"No. Wait. Can I say something first?" If he let her speak first she was going to run and hide again. He didn't want to push - not really - but he couldn't let her just wall herself up again before he at least tried to restore what they had lost.

"No. Chuck-"

"It's the kiss, right? It is. It's got to be the kiss."

Sarah was completely unreadable.

"First of all, I know that the moment was very life-or-deathish. And, normally, I would run from a situation like that. You, on the other hand... You, um... You... You kissed me, which was just..."

He read her stoic look and realized she was _not_ ready to talk about this so he moved quickly to his backup plan.

"But the thing... The thing is that I'd like to talk about, is... I'd like to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner, but we need a cover for that, so really, what I'm trying to ask you is, uh... Are we back together?"

He left it open for her to emphasize that it was just for the cover because he understood a little better now that was where she felt safe for now. He had considered every conceivable scenario and was prepared to find a way to get her to at least entertain the idea of something between them. If not right now, then someday.

Of all the possible answers, yes, no or maybe so, he could never have imagined the possibility of the answer she offered.

One that explained why she was so distant.

One that changed the rules he had only just sorted out.

One that destroyed all hope.

"Chuck, Bryce is alive."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Despite my avoidance of social media, I am aware of one of the most amusing things (IMHO) in Chuck fan fic which occurred on Twitter. During the initial run of quistie64's amazing 'Chuck vs the Sound of Music II' (Haven't read it? Go read it! Both SOM and SOM-II. And everything else by Q.), 'Carina Miller' created a Twitter account where she good-naturedly trolled quistie a little and engaged in some delightful, slightly racy back-and-forth banter with her in-story romantic interest, Agent Barstow on _his_ Twitter page often incorporating SOMII story elements.

One of the best things about it was that no one knew who was responsible (I don't know if that's still the case but if I knew I'd never tell). I needed an online gamer handle and KilleRednHeels immediately came to mind so I ended up using something similar in its elements as an homage to the Carina of SOM and her 'real life' Twitter handle. Mine isn't as elegant - they say a joke you have to explain is a poor joke - but that's how I came to use a variation of StilettoWhispeRED as Carina's Stealth Underlords player name! (Yes, that's the fictional game Morgan had an advance copy of in 'Wookiee'.) I hope that section's format didn't make your eyes bleed.

Also, mormor is Swedish for 'grandmother', specifically "mother's mother". Paternal grandmother is farmor, "father's mother"; for maternal grandfather - you guessed it, flip the components 'morfar' and paternal grandfather is farfar. Swedish seems like a very sensible language... thusfar. Nyuk, nyuk. No, seriously, it does...

.

* * *

.

The Timer: When we see the 'bomb' loaded the timer is at the 73 hour mark (72:58:24 when first seen). The events of the episode could conceivably be wedged into three days but the journey to Los Angeles by sea could not. It would take a container ship approximately one month to get from Helsinki, Finland to Los Angeles, CA, USA. So...the contents of that container must have been 'maintained' multiple times en route, the loading scene was actually _well_ before the events of the episode and those contents have been in there for about a month!

Also, it was nighttime when the timer expired (and was still daylight when they were loaded into the trunk of Stavros' car so it must have been barely after nightfall), yet the bomb techs don't crack the casing until at least after dawn the next day. That 'oxygen supply' must have had a backup and/or the timer was more of a servicing schedule. Otherwise, Bryce would have suffocated before they extracted him (an outcome some might have preferred!).

.

* * *

.

Continuity hell: This episode was really tightly written in terms of character development but has plenty of weird quirks. I'm not complaining about them per se, they are just interesting observations and I wanted you to be aware that I was aware of them even though I did not address them in-story...

I note in-story that Chuck uses the terms boyfriend and girlfriend pretty liberally for so early In a relationship but whatever, some people do that...

Yvonne's delivery is usually spot on so it always stands out to me that she says 'deli MEAT SMUGGLER' instead of 'DELI-MEAT smuggler'...

The Club Ares event (on an unspecified Friday according to the flyer), Day 56 (the Thursday before Thanksgiving, 11/15, by my count but _cannot_ precede Club Ares) and Thanksgiving itself (11/22/07) define an unsolvable puzzle that was one reason that prompted me to declare November '07 unsalvageable in terms of assigning dates to events...

Chuck seems to say Thug 1 killed a family outside of 'Garava' but I went with Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) because what the hell is a Garava?...

And where did that glass that he dunked his watch/GPS/bug in even come from? Was Lou drinking Yoo-Hoo? From a glass? And she left a sip and a half? Just seriously, what the hell?

Jeff and Lester trade obvious Pat Benetar lyrics: "Heartbreaker, dream maker, love taker don't you mess around with Chuck" yet the subtitles (at least on my disk) - completely inexplicably - say: "Don't you miss the aroma, Chuck?"

They also transcribe Mykonos (a Greek island) as Meccano (think Erector sets). I feel for hearing impaired viewers.

And, not a mistake but most importantly, like Chuck, Tom Cruise does in fact owe me nine dollars for having seen _Vanilla Sky_ in the theater. "Tech Suppooooooooort!" (you probably shouldn't laugh uncontrollably at the dramatic reveal of a movie, at least that's what my fellow movie goers seemed to think, maybe it's just me)

.

* * *

.

Next time: Bryce is brain dead from oxygen deprivation. Actually, sorry, he's not...


	22. XXII: Reunions and Partings (1:2)

...wherein an old friend, partner, lover and betrayer returns with information and an enticing offer...

Canon Reference: Episode 110 'Nemesis'

Contents: This installment originally consisted of six chapters but has been split and reduced down to three; each each chapter in this installment and next has a past and present element, beginning in the past with a Bryce / Sarah flashback scene - nothing too repellant - and the remainder is 'present' day (canon)...

A/N: This was a tough one (because a LOT happens in Nemesis and who really wants that Bryce / Sarah history, right?) and it would have been the biggest one yet. Officially novella length at almost 24K non-note words but made up of twenty-ish 'scenes' within those six chapters. It gets super convoluted and I tried (but failed) to restrain this episode to a single installment. I finally decided to split it in twain and give you the first half now and second (already completed) half later. The first consists of Chapters 67 - 69 and leads directly into the second. And the whole leads directly into the installment that follows it so there truly was no good place to split it.

Also, we are so tightly connected to Thanksgiving 2007 here that I'm going to reintroduce date/time stamps. We'll see how long that lasts. Its not natural to notice when assuming a week passes between episodes but keep in mind that these episodes are relatively tightly packed, the events of 'Nemesis' picking up literally the _same day_ as the closing scene(s) of 'Salami'.

You may want to wait and read XXII and XXIII together, as intended. Either way, as always, manage your own consumption - put it down and return to it at any time - as fits your specific circumstances and/or preferences, i.e., treat it like an actual book.

.

* * *

.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to The Eagles' _Life in the Fast Lane_ (chapter titles), Ani DiFranco's _Gravel_ is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXII - Reunions and Partings (1 of 2)

* * *

.

067: Hard-Headed Men

.

Langley, VA, Office of the Director, CIA; Friday, June 10, 2005, 9:30 am

.

"He's with someone, Sarah."

Deb McCartney addressed the young Agent from behind her desk in the ante room of the office of the recently appointed Director of the CIA, Langston Graham. The blonde woman offered Graham's brunette assistant a tight lipped smile and took a seat in the farthest corner of the room where the best sight lines could be found without offering even her usual minimum "Thanks, Deb."

_He's with someone_.

It was the usual greeting on these infrequent days when Graham held court with multiple Agents. Deb had been with Graham ever since he took up residence at Langley as a Deputy Director and it had been less than a year since Graham had been appointed as head of The Agency. Just like their previous office and the one before that, there was a separate exit so that Agents didn't cross paths unnecessarily but Deb needn't have bothered informing Sarah of another Agent's presence.

The other Agent in Graham's office was in one of his usual moods and Deb had stopped being surprised that Graham tolerated it despite what she knew of the man and his relation to Graham's projects. The intensity of his voice, if not the distinct words themselves, were carrying through the heavy steel door. The entire suite was soundproof but the barrier between the office and this anteroom was not entirely so.

But Deb had learned long ago that Graham had different levels of tolerance for different Agents depending upon his intended uses for them and this one was one of his 'specials'.

Deb was a former Agent herself until a fall had cracked her pelvis in two places. She had been on Graham's team and still delivered the intel she had been responsible for retrieving and declined medical attention until they were clear of enemy territory. When Graham had become a regional director, he brought her with him.

The obvious reason was that she knew where most, if not all, of his bodies were buried and he wanted to keep her close. But that mission was years ago and only she, her husband - who she had met fewer years ago - and Graham knew the reason he had not abandoned her in favor of the mission, which they were all clear was something he would ordinarily not hesitate to do. They were bound to each other after that uncharacteristic choice.

She knew all of his projects and hid her intelligence gathering proficiency behind the false identity of a glorified secretary. All executive assistants in this arm of the U.S. espionage machine had some degree of covert experience but her persona and official history was tailored to depict her as the least among them when she was likely the best.

Graham could have left her behind - _should_ have left her behind - and she should never have been on that mission. If she had told him before they initiated their covers he likely would have requested she be replaced for medical reasons. As it was, Graham called in all sorts of favors for her medical care afterward. An outsider might have thought he actually cared. That Graham had saved her - and her unborn child - ensured her eternal loyalty.

Graham ensured she remained employed in a prominent position and that she and her child were provided for and she ensured that the bodies stayed buried. But every meeting with the woman known within these walls as Sarah Walker - something Deb easily identified as one of Graham's completely fabricated Alpha aliases - made her question that loyalty.

Deb had practically watched Sarah Walker grow up in this waiting room and others very much like it. Her early petulance and rebelliousness. Her eagerness to learn and later to employ her skills in the field. Her adventurousness gave way to increased professionalism. Increased detachment. Sarah had always been difficult to read but her complete closing off had been slow and gradual over the years.

Sarah used to ask about Deb's children when Sarah was practically a child herself. Used to pretend to be interested at least. Had even once asked how young she was when she had her first, who from the pictures on her desk was clearly not fathered by her husband although he had adopted him shortly after their marriage. Travis had his father's stern look only occasionally but its use was always comical rather than cruel. He was a jovial, sweet boy; as smart as his father but otherwise - thankfully - completely unlike him.

Lately Sarah seemed completely unaffected by anything. She had become somewhat more open and balanced over the past two years. Being partnered with that crazy redhead Graham had adopted from the DEA and the other two women from other agencies had suited her. Until a few months ago.

Sarah had returned exclusively to solo missions and become hard as stone. Deb had been around enough agents to recognize that far away look that meant they likely weren't long for this world and had recommended that Graham partner her up with someone with a complementary skill set and personality. Deb wasn't ecstatic with his choice but had to admit he was probably the best option.

The exit door indicator on Deb's desk phone illuminated and then extinguished and the sounds from within the office ceased. Deb looked more closely at Sarah while waiting for Graham's indictor on the same phone to signal he was ready.

Sarah had the same look as the Agent who had thankfully just left Graham's office. The other Agent was a product of another of Graham's secret programs. If Sarah was Graham's scalpel, he was Graham's shotgun. A single-minded automaton who frankly scared the hell out of her, especially now that he had started managing to hide his constant anger and hatred more effectively behind an unreadable mask of his own and pretend to be human.

Most of the time.

The appropriate light on Deb's phone blinked, she instructed Sarah to go in and Sarah moved to enter, offering Deb only that same tired, partial smile in acknowledgement. Deb was afraid both the other Agent and Sarah were going to spontaneously combust. Given what he had done to achieve his status and done afterward, he was beyond help but maybe this partnership could help Sarah.

Sarah had only been inside Graham's office for fifteen minutes when her new partner entered with his usual flair. She had often considered that had she brought in a hat rack he would have started wearing fedoras just to do the James Bond hat flip. Still, with that winning smile he would have managed to pull it off and even now he earned a smile from her in return.

"He's with someone Bryce," Deb stated almost automatically while pretending to ignore him, the corners of her mouth betraying her.

"Yeah, apparently my new partner?"

"You don't say," Deb smiled as Bryce pulled a chair over, sidled up to her desk, comically folded his hands in his lap and tried to charm information out of her.

"Deb. Everyone who comes through that door knows you know everything about everyone. What can you tell me about her?"

"You'll have to wait and see," she teased before considering a small bit of advice when she saw the door to Graham's office open with the shadow of the man himself uncharacteristically filling its frame, "But try to behave yourself," she continued quietly, "She's one of our best but she's not having any fun."

"Real Ice Queen, huh?"

"Larkin! Get your ass in here!"

"Oops," Bryce exaggeratedly mouthed more than spoke to Deb. Bryce had noticed the door opening part way through their exchange but kept running his mouth anyway, likely to get a read on his new partner's reaction to him.

Bryce looked into Director Graham's office as the imposing man moved back to his desk to see his new partner sitting with her ankles crossed in a smart charcoal suit, skirt past her knees. Long wavy blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. And a glare that indicated she heard his ice queen comment while she scrutinized him and his devil-may-care attitude followed by a "Seriously?" directed at Graham.

Bryce offered his most winning smile and was met with an eye roll that would have sent a lesser man running. Deb watched as Bryce turned to close the door, heard their boss say "Don't worry Sarah, he's smarter than he looks".

"Sarah, huh?" Bryce muttered as he winked at Deb and closed the office door behind him.

Bryce was charming and stubborn. Sarah was an impenetrable fortress.

Deb smiled to herself wondering which of the two hard cases would crack first.

.

* * *

.

"_...and you came crawling back to say_

_that you wanna make good in the end_

_but oh, oh, let me count the ways_

_that I abhor you..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

En route to Echo Park; Wednesday, Nov 21, 2007, 7:30 pm

.

Thankfully, Chuck was asleep.

Sarah was driving slowly back to his place to drop him off and he was still trying to shake the effects of the sedative Bryce had used to knock him out.

Bryce...former partner, former lover, rogue agent and architect of her current assignment who she had seen lowered into the ground two months ago...Alive.

Chuck...subject of that assignment, foolishly brave, ridiculously smart, sweet, kind and handsome, who she had lied about having true affection for to spare him her nonsense and then shared a last-act-on-Earth kiss with as she was sure they were both about to die less than 24 hours ago...Alive.

She never would have given Bryce the access code to the elevator if she didn't believe, cornered like he was, that Bryce would definitely kill his hostage. Even if it was his former best friend. A man she had come to regard as far too valuable to risk on Bryce's whims.

Recent events were all terribly difficult to keep straight so she drew the timeline in her mind as she drove.

Her foolhardy attempt at an escalation to a cover relationship. A poisoning. Several poisonings. Fears of truths. A heartbreaking lie, for both of them. Another woman. A bomb. A kiss. A glorious kiss. Fear again, unspoken truths made inescapable. A resurrected former lover. And, finally, today's events, with one man holding the other hostage. All in the span of a few days.

She had managed a shower, nap and change shortly after discovering Bryce in what they were now calling a 'stasis pod' instead of the previously assumed 'bomb' before returning with Casey to the med lab where Bryce was being held. Someone on the freighter had performed periodic checks roughly every four days during the month long voyage. Changing oxygen supplies, emptying waste, force feeding him, manipulating his joints to prevent atrophy, and adding medication and sedatives.

Bryce had been locked in that pod for at least a month. It was almost enough to make her consider forgiving him.

Bryce had disappeared and left her holding the bag when he had destroyed the Intersect and sent it to someone who turned out to be the man currently sleeping off a powerful sedative in her passenger seat. As a result of Bryce's actions, she had been subjected to enhanced interrogation and relegated to basic missions including one mission run by a madman that had brought her back to California just in time to be caught up in the fallout of the culmination of those actions.

When Bryce - in hibernation for a month or more - finally woke up, did he ask for his partner? For her? To find out if she was alright or incarcerated or even alive? No, he asked for Chuck.

It just reminded her of how angry she had been at Bryce. How full of wrath. Hell hath no fury but it wasn't that she had been personally 'scorned' in any way - at least not in any way she cared about -it was that she had been professionally betrayed.

How even before she had been informed of his death after a month of distrust and fear of her defying The Agency she had felt bereft. Adrift without the comfort of his stabilizing influence. As if one wildfire could anchor another.

Her instincts told her he might be dead. Likely was. But there had been a part of her that had simply, stubbornly assumed that he would turn up at some point they would inevitably resume their on-again off-again partnership and romance until she had watched that casket being lowered into the ground.

Was it a romance? Was there anything deeper than undeniable raw passion? Whatever it was, most of her had believed it would be restored once he inevitably resurfaced.

But she was also angry at him for leaving her and making her a target of extremely dangerous people. Chief among them, their boss. There was a tiny part of her that hated him for it.

And, even though his absence made her face a new future without the comfort and security of their partnership, from what she had known at the time, it wasn't his death that caused that. It was his betrayal. He left her holding the proverbial bag. And _that_ was what ended them. And that was why a tiny, wicked part of her was smugly satisfied to hear he was dead.

But now he was back. And she had to face the possibility that all of her assumptions - about him, about herself and about her place in the world - had been wrong. That there was more to the story.

Chuck stirred in his sleep and Sarah continued to drive aimlessly in the general direction of the Echo Park apartment he called home. Chuck had left her too. Had given up on her. Because she drove him away. And into the arms of a pretty little brunette woman who thought he was as fantastic as he actually is.

Sarah had been a equal parts interested and angry at his voicemail asking her on a date, coming as it did on the heels of his aborted courtship of another woman. And more interested than angry at his invitation to Thanksgiving dinner this morning - something she hadn't celebrated since she was a small child. But he had just been making out with Lou two days before and suddenly he wanted to involve her in a family holiday celebration? To go out with her?

Which was still kinda nice to hear. That someone wanted to go out with her. Especially someone like him.

She had always kept men at arms length. They never really went out. They'd meet places, some she would invite home to her apartment while at Harvard but she always made up reasons why they had to leave when she was through with them. She had become consumed by morbid thoughts of her mortality as a future Agent and thought little beyond the here and now.

As for the few men she met as a Field Agent in her rare downtime, it was always simpler to accept their invitations. At first she justified it as a need to maintain her sanctum for operational reasons until it was too hard to ignore as a pathological avoidance of truly getting close to anyone. Even Bryce wasn't welcome in her bed for more than recreational activities and she learned to avoid the objections by joining him in his whenever the two beds were not the same.

Chuck was both the first person she ever felt safe with and the first person who simply enjoyed her company. Wanted to go out with her to spend time with her. He couldn't possibly have any expectations of more than that especially with deli-girl still on his breath.

If it wasn't for the fact that she had already kissed him.

She had kissed him because it was what she wanted in that moment. For herself. All other considerations and lies she had previously told rendered meaningless. She wanted to kiss him. And wanted him to die knowing that she wanted to kiss him. It was meant to be her last act on Earth. And as last acts went, of all the ways she had thought she would meet her doom, it was the best possible way to die. Far better than anything she could ever have imagined.

The problem was that the world had not ended.

She had told him days prior that whatever there was between them wasn't going anywhere, true in her mind as much due to her need to maintain detachment as the realities of their situation. Chuck had run as far from her as he could - which wasn't very, given his circumstances - and into another woman's arms after that truth serum incident.

Sarah had crushed his hopes for them but she had selfishly thought that didn't mean that he needed to run to someone else. She had only been as casual in her sex life as she had because she expected to die tomorrow. Every time she lived to see a new tomorrow, she considered it a temporary reprieve. And Chuck wasn't like that. He shouldn't have to...

..._Oh, Chuck_.

She looked over at his sleeping form and finally appreciated that he had experienced the same thing. He wanted something other than the promise of death all around him. Wanted it from her even and had only run away when she had pushed him past his breaking point. Of course, he had a breaking point. He wasn't suited for living in Death's shadow. Didn't walk with Death like she did.

She found that she was willing to ignore the past week and accept his implied motivation for invitations he had made as proof that it was her that he really wanted all along. Which was nice to hear but came with the same set of problems they started with.

She wouldn't hold his reaction of seeking comfort with someone more willing to give it against him. Who was she to judge? She couldn't blame him. It was all terribly unfair and confusing.

She wanted to run far away from it all too.

.

* * *

.

When Chuck left the Buy More with her to go to the medical facility - stunned at the news she had delivered which also provided the welcome side effect of diverting his questions about whatever was going on between them - she busied herself with contacting Casey and arranging Chuck's access to the building. She had deliberately saved locking down those details for the drive to avoid Chuck's questions. Even so, with his inquisitive nature, of course he managed to ask some questions and a few stood out to her.

_How is Bryce... back?_

_That's what we need you to help us find out._

She could feel him studying her but she refused to glance over or acknowledge him in any way as her Porsche chewed up the road between the Buy More and downtown LA. She pressed the accelerator down a little harder to chew it up faster. All his questions were carefully spaced and patiently delivered but met with curt responses or thankfully details related from Casey who was going to meet and escort them.

_Why did he do it? Destroy the Intersect? Send it to me?_

_We're hoping you can help us with that too._

She knew he was assuming they needed Chuck's command of the Intersect to provide insights into any responses Bryce might offer. Now wasn't the time to reveal that Bryce had asked for Chuck specifically. And, surprisingly, it was still a slightly sore point that Bryce hadn't asked for her.

_Can we talk about what happened last night?_

_Now's not the time._

This was the discussion she didn't want to get into. And finally - as she pulled around into a street parking space two blocks away not wanting them or her car to be seen on building surveillance or by any stray personnel - as they rounded the corner toward the rear entrance - he asked another perfectly reasonable question that she refused to answer.

_When is?_

They had thankfully arrived at the building downtown where Casey met them at the rear entrance just after he asked that last question because that conversation terrified her beyond reason.

When she had told him not to worry and that the med lab was completely secure, he had declared that she "clearly hadn't played enough video games".

It was that easy disarming charm that he possessed to make such an out of the blue comment and she had asked him why he said that.

He answered ominously that "nothing good _ever_ happens in a med lab."

Seeing Bryce unconscious, strapped to an examination chair didn't help Chuck's impression of the situation. Chuck was so agitated that he didn't notice her own reactions to the revelation from Casey that Bryce wasn't even aware that either Casey - or more significantly, Sarah - was there.

Nor did he notice her stiffening reaction to Casey's warning that Bryce was a rogue CIA assassin. She had been the man's partner and was every bit the assassin Bryce was. And then some.

Chuck was more concerned about the fact that he was going to be the one sent in to ask questions. He hadn't even really noticed the first truly kind words she had spoken to him in days when she pointed out what a good friend and listener he was.

He didn't really acknowledge her but it had seemed to encourage him to enter the med lab.

A few moments later, for future reference, Sarah mentally filed away the knowledge that Chuck was right.

Nothing good _ever_ happens in a med lab.

.

* * *

.

Everything went downhill from there.

After a bizarre exchange in some made-up language even _she_ didn't recognize Casey had given voice to her own apprehension under his breath when Chuck had leaned in closer at Bryce's request. Before they knew it Bryce was directing them to retreat stacked one behind the other so neither could get an angle to shoot.

What happened in between didn't matter to her in that moment. She had brought Chuck here and now Bryce had a syringe to his neck. When Bryce demanded the access code to the elevator she tried to read him. Would he hurt Chuck? Was this his plan all along? Neither would surprise her. Ultimately, it was a chance she wasn't willing to take and - over Casey's protest - she told Bryce the elevator access code and they were both gone.

Just gone.

They shouldn't have let Bryce get away with Chuck. They _should_ have shot him. Not Bryce. Chuck. _Then_ Bryce. It was a situation they had discussed recently but Casey must have gone through the same mental process she had. Bryce couldn't likely get out of the building with Chuck. They still had a chance to reacquire Chuck.

Both she and Casey had been in a position to prevent a rogue agent with unknown motives, affiliations or extraction plans escape with the most important intelligence asset in the world and neither had done what needed to be done.

They found Chuck in the elevator with the door jammed open on the third floor and she was sure for a moment that he was dead until she managed to rouse him. She left him with Casey and pulled the medics into the elevator. They checked Chuck out and confirmed the drug used was mostly harmless. The only trace of Bryce was three unconscious security personnel throughout the building, one of whom was missing his uniform and weapon.

Once outside, Chuck shared details of his exchange with Bryce, what had happened when the elevator stopped and the information revealed by his flash. The names Tommy Delgado and Fulcrum and that Bryce had not clarified anything about either of them. In his weakened state it prompted more, mostly redundant flashes and the effort took its toll. As they wrestled him to her car they asked if Bryce had said anything else and Chuck looked her in the eye and said only "It's hard to say goodbye."

Bryce had always said that when a mission as the Andersons was drawing to a close. The first time and every time thereafter. She felt a huge rush of confused, directionless endorphins when Chuck spoke those same words thinking, she assumed, that Chuck was no longer feeling OK and the medics had been mistaken about the harmlessness of the drug.

For a moment she thought she was going to lose him. Again. He stumbled a bit and the need to protect him was suddenly completely overwhelming but he caught himself and eased into her passenger seat with light-hearted promises not to vomit in her beloved car that eased her own racing heart.

He was alive. The bomb hadn't killed them. And she had been preoccupied by how that had torn down the walls she had built between her and Chuck. It was foolish to worry about such things because he was alive. Bryce hadn't killed him. Neither she nor Casey had killed him, unnecessarily it turned out.

She was glad that Chuck was sleeping now. Greatly preferred it to the way he had stared a hole in her on the ride to the lab. Studying her. Figuring her out.

He saw through her so easily. It limited what she could and could not react to when he was watching. But, in the here and now, she reached over to play with the curls on the back of his head that his sister Ellie had been right about on two counts, both when she was under the influence of a disorienting truth serum. They _were_ making funny animal shapes and, next to a bomb that wasn't a bomb, at least not the exploding kind, they _were_ pretty good for grabbing hold of.

She thought back again to finding him in the elevator and the relief she felt at being able to rouse him with her voice even as she pulled away at the look of drunken wonderment on his face upon seeing her. She sputtered a bit as she remembered his change of tune when Casey leaned in, replacing her, and Chuck's rather insulting squeals of terror.

That seemed to stir Chuck from his sleep, luckily just as she parked her car outside his apartment complex.

He groaned and clutched his head so Sarah reached into the back seat for one of the bottled waters she had brought. She made him drink the whole thing before she allowed him to even entertain the idea of standing. He must have felt horrible because he wasn't even asking questions. It wasn't until she had helped his long frame out of her low vehicle and they had walked most of the way to his apartment that he found his voice again.

"I feel like crap," was the statement he chose to reintroduce words in their interaction and Sarah decided to keep it clinical. She could do clinical.

"It wasn't a full dose. It'll be out of your system in a few hours."

"Thanks. I think I can handle it from here. So, are you and Casey gonna go after Bryce?"

He was fishing. Just a little bit but it was still there. She had a lot going on in her head, both how to deal with Chuck after their kiss at the docks revealed that she _did_ have feelings for him even though she had implied she had not. How to get away without over-explaining all the reasons she thought they couldn't have more than a cover relationship. Bryce's reappearance was yet another complication and Chuck probably assumed she was in some way torn between the two men. Explaining the truth of the matter was not only difficult to explain - even to herself - but simply revealed too much.

Yes, clinical was the best approach.

"No. Bryce is probably halfway around the world by now. It's someone else's job to find him."

"Sarah, this is Bryce Larkin we're talking about here. Your old flame, my old nemesis. We have to do something."

"We each have our own assignment."

"Right. And I'm yours, so what... What does this mean? For us?"

"Nothing. You're protected," she answered in a deliberately cold and vague fashion. It's not as though she would have been any more forthcoming if Bryce hadn't reappeared. He was not the deciding factor, it was that she was uncertain how to proceed.

As uncertain as she had been about anything in her entire life.

"No. For us. Our fake relationship. I mean, you and Bryce were... You're really not making this easy."

She knew it wasn't easy. Nothing about this was easy. Did he think it was easy for her? Fortunately for Sarah, unfortunately for Chuck, his sister Ellie approached with a bag of groceries at just that moment.

Greetings and good to see yous were exchanged all around until Ellie, helpfully, asked Chuck's question for him. "Are you coming to Thanksgiving?"

"Of course," Sarah responded brightly.

"Wanna come in for some coffee?"

"Love to."

Ellie smiled at that and entered the apartment, leaving the door ajar for them and Chuck returned his attention to Sarah.

"I didn't think you'd want to stay."

"Can't refuse Ellie. How would that look?"

"Right."

"Chuck. Stop analyzing everything I say. I'm just gonna put you to bed since you're tired from last night. Like a good girlfriend."

"So we are back together?" he half-asked, half-stated hesitantly.

"I'm coming to Thanksgiving, so I'd better be something. Unless there's someone else you wanna invite."

She hadn't meant to be so biting in her tone but really, he had abandoned ship with her once already. That tiny bit of self-recrimination over an irrationally jealous thought left her wholly unprepared for what he said next.

Sarah looked up to find his still-bleary eyes waiting to meet hers before he said firmly "No. I want you."

She couldn't help but smile at that and she grabbed him by the arm. "C'mon. Let's get you to bed."

"Why Sarah Walker, I never!"

Sarah laughed at his feigned indignation and, for just that tiny moment, all was right with the world.

.

* * *

.

Chuck made his apologies to Ellie, saying he had to work late the last two nights and was just exhausted before making his way to his bedroom. Without turning on the lights, he threw his tie and dress shirt over his desk chair, unlaced his Chuck Taylor's with some effort and tried to kick them off but Sarah helped him unlace them more fully before he was met with any success.

He flopped on the bed and Sarah demanded "Pants too."

"But...you can't..." he tried to protest and she just rolled her eyes.

"You going commando?"

"No."

"Then big deal. Pants. Now."

"Yes, ma'am," Chuck answered as he bridged his hips and slid off his pants down where she yanked them the rest of the way off. And she draped the covers over him thinking better of leaning in to kiss him. She had turned to go when he, half-asleep, muttered to her back.

"I didn't really get to ask him anything important. Bryce, I mean. Why he set all this in motion. I didn't ask the right questions." Sarah felt a little sorry for him until he did that sneaky smart thing he did, even semi-conscious. Setting up an insightful comment that struck her to the bone with innocuous observations. Because she knew exactly what he meant - her avoidance of his question under the influence of truth serum and the subsequent kiss that revealed the truth - when he said, "Seems like a trend."

She had paused at the door to listen to what he was saying but turned at that last bit to see him still looking at her through heavy eyes and she offered what she saw as one of the few truths about herself "Some questions are better not answered. You don't know me, Chuck. No one does."

"Hmmpf," was the muttered reply. And she hoped he remembered none of this in the morning. "I'm too tired to argue but I think I do..." he said as he closed his eyes and settled his head on his pillow.

"Or I'm starting to..." he mumbled as sleep overtook him.

"Jus' a little." His hand twitched in the attempt of his thumb and index finger to signify the size of 'just a little' but he failed and the hand fell limply onto the bed.

Sarah watched his chest rise and fall a few times before softly closed the door and headed to the kitchen where she could pretend to be Chuck's normal and suitable girlfriend and bask in the warmth of the other Bartowski. The one who - so far - wasn't questioning and seeing through her many deceptions.

Chuck might be right. Maybe he was starting to know her. And that was what she was afraid of.

.

* * *

.

068: One Thing in Common

.

Bogotá, Colombia; Nov 3, 2005

.

"Well," Bryce paused and seemed to consider for a moment what he wanted to say now that their mission was over and both were waiting to depart for their next mission, "...it's hard to say goodbye, Sarah Anderson."

It was a harmlessly flirty comment like all the other times they had parted after a mission. But this time he held onto what had become their traditional handshake and looked her deeply in the eyes, leaning in until their faces nearly met and she felt something stirring in her that she had tried to ignore for a while now.

They're partners and she had been adamant about keeping things professional. But he was charming. And good looking. And a hell of a kisser even if those had just been for the cover and his hands always seemed to test the limits of her tolerance.

And he trusted her as she trusted him. Each with the other's life. Earlier today he had been held at gunpoint and she had killed the man holding him with a well-placed shot just missing Bryce's ear.

This was their first mission as a married couple. A cover of a married couple. Her first as Sarah Anderson.

As Sarah Anderson she had the luxury of slipping into an identity not her own. Not even who he knew her as outside of missions. She was Sarah Walker when this was over and someone else soon thereafter, but for a few more hours she could be Sarah Anderson.

She closed her eyes and closed the remaining distance between them until her lips tentatively met his.

She was still concerned about maintaining their professional standard but she wasn't talking about putting her heart on the line. Just adding another facet to their partnership. A benefit some might say.

DEA warned her time and again about nice guys.

_"Girls like us don't deserve nice guys. And nice guys sure as hell don't deserve girls like us."_

But Bryce wasn't a nice guy.

And she trusted him with her life.

_If anyone gets hurt here_, she thought as she deepened the kiss and allowed him to back toward his bedroom where his suitcase was already packed _...it's their own damn fault._

.

* * *

.

"_...but instead I let you in,_

_just like I've always done..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA; Thursday, Nov 22, 2007, evening

.

Chuck had greeted her at the door and Sarah had kissed his sister Ellie on the cheek but not Chuck. He noticed but played it off well. She didn't mean it as a slight, not really, she just couldn't risk opening those flood gates just now.

She was surprised to see Casey there, dressed quite nicely in an ever-so-slightly-_not_ G-man suit. At her quizzical expression questioning his presence, he simply said "Ellie," in the perfect example of brief exposition.

Sarah knew exactly what he meant and nodded in understanding. The woman was hard to say 'No' to.

And even when she had converged outside the door with Morgan and his date, she began to realize there was a strange tension in the air between Anna - really, Anna? - she _had_ missed a lot in just a few days - and Ellie. But Ellie's cooking, as usual, was fantastic even though the woman herself indulged very little.

Sarah had been trying to engage everyone at the table other than the man sitting across from her but when she complimented Ellie's cooking he finally took the opportunity to engage her asking if she usually 'did' Thanksgiving.

Here he was trying to _know_ her again and she offered up a vague "Not recently."

Which was very true. She hadn't celebrated this holiday for almost twenty years. She vaguely remembered sitting around the table with her family. And then the chairs around the table and the people in those chairs had changed. And then she left with her father and Thanksgiving was just another day.

But here, at Ellie's table, it was different. Ellie was the warmest person Sarah could imagine. And Devon was her male equal. They adored each other and wanted to extend that warmth to the people they cared about. Or even extend it to those they felt needed it in their life as Ellie had done for Casey.

As Chuck had done for her.

Two of the deadliest people in the world invited to break bread with the Bartowski siblings.

A few minutes later, Chuck had left to manage some sort of sweet potato crisis involving marshmallows leaving Ellie to wonder out loud why they weren't in the grocery bag. Sarah smiled to herself because she knew, or at least had a really good guess, why that was.

She speculated correctly that he had opened them on the way home and snuck a few from the bag. He was often grazing on junk food but his slim physique revealed none of it. And she realized that just as Chuck was constantly asking questions and gathering information about her, so was she learning things about him with no tactical purpose. It was purely out of personal curiosity.

Chuck had retrieved the marshmallows for the sweet potatoes and - while Ellie was adjusting the sweet potatoes by adding a gooey layer of melted marshmallows - while Morgan was preoccupied with Anna seeking approval for the apparently vile green bean casserole that she had brought - while Casey was humoring Devon and his discussion of fitness and water sports and visibly struggling not to break the other man's arm when he grabbed Casey's bicep - Sarah dared to look up at the man she had been trying to avoid any meaningful discussion with who was still trying to get her to make eye contact.

When she did finally humor him and looked squarely at him for the first time that evening she could immediately tell something was wrong. He got her full attention when he began mouthing the name Bryce Larkin, agonizingly slowly.

She was almost amused thinking she would have to work with him on trusting her to lip read much faster but her spy mask slipped firmly into place when he finished with the words:

"...is in my bedroom."

.

* * *

.

Chuck's Bedroom

.

She heard him behind her. He was never _that_ quiet.

Had she really expected him to be sitting there waiting for her like a normal person? It seems she had because she didn't fully check her corners.

"You're getting rusty," came the still-familiar voice from behind her and she whipped around to face him.

He must have dropped down from the ceiling, wedged in the corner where the walls met above the now slightly ajar door. Slick move. She would know, she taught him how to do it. He was showing off like the peacock that he was.

And still, inexplicably, she was drawn to him. And that thought alone made her take a step backward. He was the fugitive from the U.S. government and she was still a government agent, so why was she the one who felt trapped?

Sarah reached for the pistol at the small of her back but not under her blouse where she could reach it just yet. "Bryce, I have a gun. Do I need to use it?"

"I'm unarmed," he said as he showed his palms and half held out his arms, "and I'm sorry," he pled as he closed the distance between them.

"What are you sorry for? Exactly?" He had done this what seemed like a thousand times before. Likely closer to dozens of times and she had always eventually forgiven him. Quickly forgiven him even. Or at least stopped bothering being angry. Their time together was too short to waste.

"For leaving you like that. For not saying goodbye."

And he had done this dozens of times too. Missed the mark - saying what he thought she wanted to hear. They hardly ever said goodbye to one another. It was a running joke between them. Leaving wasn't what had angered her. It was not trusting her.

"We're supposed to be partners, Bryce. _Were_ supposed to be partners," she emphasized the past tense.

"That's not all we were."

Too obvious, Bryce, she thought. And reconsidered reaching for her gun.

"Why shouldn't I arrest you right now?"

"Because I'm not a rogue spy," he said emphatically as he stepped closer. She could always tell when he was lying. At least the blatant lies. And she was surprised to see that he was telling the truth.

"Because the Intersect was a mission," he continued and there was a glimmer of something but, God help her, she believed him. And the doubt that put in her mind made her drop her guard as a man she had once trusted with her life closed the distance between them.

"Because, Sarah," and he dipped his head like he had done what seemed like a thousand times before and the part of her that had pretended to be someone named Sarah Anderson dozens of times before reacted as Sarah Anderson always did even as he continued "...you're still in love with me."

His lips found hers and she responded instantly to the once familiar sensation. She could have fought it but it was automatic - instinctual - to kiss him back. They had always been good at this.

At not talking. At each taking what they needed from the other.

It had always been easy and natural in those moments where she allowed herself to _be_ Sarah Anderson. To be a woman supposedly in love with this man. And that had allowed her to lose herself in the feel of him. The sensations that Sarah Anderson had once equated with love.

And she felt the bullet resistant vest under his shirt - which he must have claimed from one of the med facility guards - and by the way his hand moved her arm away from the small of his back she knew he had lied about not being armed.

It was his way. Always something in reserve. At least one lie for every truth.

It was why they never challenged each other to be better people.

It was why they fit together so easily.

He was her.

She fisted his hair in one hand and his shirt in the other and felt the pull of something else foreign to these frantic, passionate exchanges they had shared for nearly two years.

_Because Sarah, you're still in love with me._

It had been a quirk of their first meeting but he had always preferred to call her Sarah, even when it wasn't paired with Anderson or Walker. But something had changed.

She wasn't Sarah Anderson anymore. And - even _if_ she once had been - she sure as hell wasn't in love with Bryce Larkin.

A creak from the hallway drew her attention to the door. She glanced even as she continued to kiss him - struggling to let go of the one comfort in her life for the past two years unexpectedly restored to her - and saw that no one was there - that the door had been closed completely where she could have sworn it was slightly ajar before - and she was suddenly reminded her of her surroundings.

Saw the posters on the wall. A few unlit candle that still hadn't been put away. Game controllers, the innards of various electronic devices and a guitar she had never heard him play. All the superficial things that painted just the outer shell of the man Chuck Bartowski was.

And all of the deeper things that he represented to her rushed back to the front of her consciousness. The things that made kissing _him_ the thing she wanted most in the world when she thought they were both about to die. The one comfort that made even death palatable.

Here in this room, the place where she was the most comfortable she could ever remember being, and she was kissing the wrong man.

Sarah pulled away, the long-indulged comfortable connection severed by thoughts of another man and another passionate kiss and her former partner's still unexplained betrayal. "Well, you've still got it," she said as she backed away.

"This isn't a play, Sarah. I need your help."

Her stomach dropped as she realized how easily he had slipped past her defenses. How many times in her life - even as a child - especially as a child and from the mouth of someone she adored and foolishly trusted - had she heard some version of _this isn't a play_ only to be quickly followed by some version of _and I need something from you_?

She had no time to call him on it. The only true things she was relatively sure had come out of his mouth were his claims of innocence. And clearly Chuck had let him in and Bryce had not taken the opportunity to harm him. She had to get to the bottom of this, but she had no time to do so or to call him on anything else as there was a rattle of the doorknob.

Bryce moved to the open window as a very dangerous NSA agent with no inclination to hear Bryce out burst in.

"Please don't run," she said to Bryce as he moved to the open window and she put herself between Casey and Bryce.

"Casey, everything is under control," she tried to reason with him as he breezed past her and carefully peered out the window to find Larkin had disappeared. Again.

"Nice work, CIA."

If she hadn't felt a pang of hurt from her new partner's well-known disdain for the agency she worked for directed at her, she might have been amused when Chuck followed Casey in to the room and reacted to Casey's drawn weapon.

"Hey. No guns at Thanksgiving."

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Courtyard, Echo Park, CA; Nov 22, 2007

.

"He's gone. Call it in from my place. I'll check out back," Casey instructed as he handed her his apartment keys before heading toward the back of the complex.

"How did Casey find out?" she asked Chuck as she moved toward Casey's apartment.

Chuck paused for a beat before answering, "I made a rash decision."

That explained the door and Sarah stopped short. "You saw Bryce kiss me, didn't you?"

"I saw two people kissing." The idea that Bryce had "kissed her" was absurd given the brief but heated make-out session he had witnessed.

"Chuck."

"I'm just saying. I think you're perfectly capable of _not_ kissing someone you don't want to kiss..." and Sarah wondered if he was hinting as much about her deliberate avoidance of him at the front door - or even taking what she wanted for one of the few times in her life in front of the bomb that wasn't a bomb - as he was referring to the pull that she was not about to admit existed between her and Bryce and seemed like it always had.

"Not that I ever considered you the type to allow unwelcome advances," he continued. "Or maybe I'm wrong and I _should_ have let Casey shoot him."

"Chuck, me and Bryce...it was complicated."

"So I hear. And saw. I guess this means we're not getting back together," and before she could respond to that loaded question a light turned on in Casey's supposedly unoccupied apartment.

"Sarah, why is someone in Casey's apartment?" Chuck asked unnecessarily as she slipped out of her shoes, signaling him first to be quiet and then to stay put.

She entered silently and had the drop on him but of course there was a slight noise behind her. Enough to get Bryce to whip around with gun drawn. "Put it down, Bryce," she demanded.

"Sarah," Chuck began before Bryce said exactly what _she_ was going to say.

"Close the door, Chuck."

"Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm closing the door. I'm closing the door. I'm walking into the apartment. Please, do not shoot me." Of course, she would have preferred he put himself on the other side of the door and let her deal with this. But that wasn't who he was.

"I need you to listen to me," Bryce pled with her but she wasn't falling for that again. Especially with that gun in his hand.

"Put it down, Bryce."

"The Intersect was a mission," Bryce continued, lowering his gun slightly, "I was recruited by an outfit called Fulcrum, a special access group inside the CIA."

"You're lying. We would know that." Sarah knew Bryce and Sarah knew truth - even if she and the latter were only casual acquaintances. Something wasn't quite right here.

"They knew who I was, my activation codes, my record. They ordered me to shed my agency contacts and go deep. Only then did I realize it was an internal strike to download and destroy the Intersect. Fulcrum had plans for its intel."

That niggling in the back of her mind - the one that had saved her more times than she could count - was getting stronger.

"How can I trust you, Bryce?"

"I didn't mean to hurt you, Sarah. I didn't know who to trust."

And there was the answer to all of the questions. He didn't want to hurt her but he didn't trust her. Then or now. But that was how they had always been. And there was still one thing he hadn't answered.

"Why Chuck?" she asked simply.

"Yeah, why Chuck?" was repeated by the man himself from behind her. She was equal parts amused and exasperated. The ability to produce that combined reaction was another defining characteristic of his.

"I needed a friend who wasn't a spy," Bryce answered. "He wouldn't know anything about Fulcrum. Or the Intersect. Or Sand Wall."

The flash was immense.

Sand Wall.

Chuck had just a moment to puzzle out the possible meaning. Was it a blend of 'sandbag' and 'stonewall'? Hiding one's strength to gain an advantage and blocking someone's progress through evasion or lack of cooperation. Whose strength? Whose progress? What did it have to do with the Intersect? With him?

Then the information hit him like a tidal wave.

Everything a man Chuck had once considered a friend had done. Creating chaos in his wake. Seducing and burning female assets affiliated with people of interest. Many of whom were killed after later discovery. Assassinations. Many were more mundane but these missions were the ugly side of every spy movie he had ever seen. It all seemed to start with a prototype training program under the umbrella of something he recognized: Project Omaha.

Chuck didn't understand. This wasn't the Bryce he once knew.

Then he saw it. A recommendation from Bryce suggesting that Charles Irving Bartowski be recruited as a special class of field analyst. It exalted his achievements and capabilities as a raw athlete, engineer, problem solver and hacker. And another file rescinding that recommendation, riddled with lies and false accounts of how Chuck had fabricated those results or Bryce had exaggerated them for a friend. What a middling athletic specimen he had turned out to be and how he had stood on the shoulders of others to create the impression of greatness.

Sandwiched between them was what must have been the precipitating event. A mission. When Bryce was supposedly spending a semester abroad. Intelligence gathering ending with a building explosion to hide his involvement. Bryce's first non-training mission it would seem.

It had resulted in the deaths of twelve civilians.

And that was the answer. What changed Bryce Larkin. He suddenly saw the Bryce he knew from Stanford and how he had tried to shield him from similar realities. How Bryce had tried to throw him clear of a different kind of blast. It didn't excuse his behavior or failure to talk to Chuck about it.

Maybe his fate had been inescapable in one way or another but, classified status or not, Bryce shouldn't have had to bear that burden alone. It also didn't explain their current circumstance where Chuck was drawn back into this world due to Bryce's later actions anyway.

But Bryce was once a good man. And he and Chuck had once been good friends.

Then he dug deeper. The Sand Wall file seemed to contain everything necessary to exonerate Bryce if the orders had been legitimate.

But they weren't.

Everything from the activation and authorization codes Bryce had mentioned to something called an executive black order - a presidential order - was there. But Chuck could also see the actual files were all created on the same day despite the dates on the documents. Three days before his birthday. Three days before Bryce sent the Intersect to him. Not nearly enough time to plan and execute a one-man assault on a secure research facility.

Bryce had been duped.

These were not the loosely cross-referenced files inherent to the Intersect. These were all part of one massive file. And what was most disturbing was that this file had been added to the Intersect _while_ it was destroyed.

Both the flash and the realization left Chuck reeling and physically nauseated and he could barely articulate what he had seen.

"Sand Wall. Sand Wall. That was the name of the mission. Sarah, I think he's telling the truth."

"Did you flash?" Chuck barely consciously processed the way they were standing. Her with her gun outstretched partially shielding him. This was their core dynamic - and it worked for them - and he had never felt like 'less' by the way she stood between him and danger.

But having seen more than a few indications in Bryce's file that his partnership with Sarah had been extremely successful - he wished - just a little bit and not for the first time - that he could stand next to her.

Still, here she was. Trusting whatever he said to her without even turning to look at him. For all she knew he had seen something that would make him side with Bryce and attack her from behind - as unlikely and ill-advised as that would be. It wasn't the cold indifference she had been trying to project for the past two days, it was trust.

Maybe this was all they would ever be allowed to be and that, more than anything else, made his stomach twist and head feel light to the point that all he could muster was a weak "Yeah."

And, of course, when she lowered her gun Bryce gave Sarah that winning smile. And even though Chuck knew her relaxing of her stance was due to the intel he had provided, not able to see her face Chuck couldn't help but be reminded of a hundred such smiles at a hundred different fraternity mixers directed at a hundred different beautiful women - all of whom smiled the same way back - when Bryce restated what Chuck now knew to be the truth.

"I'm not rogue."

As much as Chuck had wished Bryce dead in that moment and over Thanksgiving blessings and when he suggested to Sarah that maybe Casey should have shot Bryce for what Chuck knew was not a one-sided kiss, still light-headed from the flash, everything turned to black when Casey entered, ignored both Chuck's and Sarah's pleas as he simultaneously slammed the door shut and blew Bryce across the room with a single gun shot to the chest.

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Residence, Echo Park, CA; Nov 22, 2007

.

Casey and Chuck had gone back over to Thanksgiving dinner with the story that Sarah had to take a call from her parents. A perfectly reasonable holiday explanation. Casey would make his own excuses and Sarah would return to the apartment when he returned to supervise Bryce who would be staying here tonight. She was just thankful that Casey's apartment was completely soundproof and the two doctors had not heard the gunshot from across the courtyard.

The story about her parents was believable but stung a bit. She didn't expect a call from anyone. Bryce was lounging in the same chair as before but now as though he owned the place, seemingly unaffected by the fact that he owed their good graces entirely to Chuck vouching for him and his hopes of exoneration to Chuck's ability to identify enemy agents.

"So...you're Chuck's girlfriend now," Bryce asked without asking.

"Don't start Bryce."

"You know there was a time when Chuck wouldn't even be able to speak to a woman as beautiful as you."

"You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised by a lot of things," she answered deliberately cryptically. Nothing irritated Bryce like not being the coolest dude in a room.

"Like what?" he asked as indifferently as he could muster.

"Like, he's saved my life. More than once. Casey's too. Hundreds of innocents as well," Sarah was surprised a bit by the pride in her voice but she embraced it as she continued, "We make a really good team. Chuck, Casey and me. Maybe you shouldn't have assumed he couldn't do this."

"I always knew he had it in him," Bryce mused distractedly, "I thought he and I would make a good team too."

"What happened to you Bryce? We saw Fleming's files. The deal you made with him. Chuck saw it too."

Bryce's face fell a bit even as Casey reentered the apartment, gun drawn, until he saw both Sarah and Bryce roughly where he left them.

"Hope I'm not interrupting your little reunion. You'd better get back. Ellie's asking about you. I'll keep an eye on your boyfriend. I'm not letting him out of our sight until the exchange tomorrow. We can wait to contact General Beckman until you get back."

Sarah resisted the urge to lash out at the 'boyfriend' crack and just looked back at Bryce.

"Some other time, Sarah," he said with that cocky smile of his as she slid out Casey's front door.

.

* * *

.

069: Brutally Handsome, Terminally Pretty

.

Cherbourg-Octeville, France; April 2006

.

"Honey, I'm home!" he announced only to find the woman he knew as Sarah despite the alias they might be using at the time sitting at the table of the apartment they were utilizing for a joint operation with the DGSI for the next several days.

She silently watched him cross the room and unload his bag of pastries and coffee, naming each item as he extracted it from the bag. She didn't speak until he finished and she began in a way no one likes to hear.

"Bryce, we need to talk."

"Ooooo-kay," he dragged out as he slid into the seat opposite her and she began explaining her position about staying professional and detached. How she felt pressured and didn't necessarily think they were intended to be any more than they were. How she wasn't judging his behavior on missions and knew she didn't have any room to talk but just didn't think they were good for each other.

It was everything he feared. He had pushed for another getaway like their week in Cabo and Sarah felt suffocated by the mere idea. They had been partnered for about a third of their missions since that trip and he had thought she was just as interested in him as she had seemed then. He shouldn't have pushed so hard but he had assumed their relationship was founded as much on their mutual attraction as any outside influences that helped push them together.

His exposure to Project Omaha had been martial arts training. Visual data dumps it had taken a few times to notice hidden in training films. He hadn't cared. It had helped make him into the agent he wanted to be.

Hers had been... well he wasn't exactly sure of the extent of her exposure. All he knew was that they fought with very similar styles and what little Graham had told him.

Even based on what he knew, it wouldn't do to push any harder right now. He would wait for a weaker moment, when their cover activities were more sexually charged and she was more receptive to the idea, then he would try again. And learn to be satisfied with their ongoing post-mission romance rather than trying to push her into something more real. Something she wasn't prepared to consider that instead wrecked everything.

"Are we good?" she finally asked and Bryce realized she had exhausted all the reasons why they shouldn't be romantically involved. He had stopped paying attention to the details once he realized the underlying problem that she had simply thought better of being involved with him.

He plastered on his best smile and said as naturally as possible "Of course. I'm still your partner. You can count on me, Sarah."

She smiled at that thinking she could, in fact, count on him. At least in the field.

"I'm glad," she said as she leaned in and kissed his cheek, "Thanks for understanding."

She smiled as she grabbed a croissant from the pile of assorted baked goods and left to her own bedroom as their cover identities were not married on this mission and having never been comfortable sleeping next to him anyway.

He had hoped they had moved beyond this stage and knew his own behavior had been part of the problem. He resolved to lay the foundations - maybe straighten up a bit - before trying again.

After all, it had worked once and he always had an ace in the hole.

.

* * *

.

"_...and across the kitchen table_

_I fired several rounds_

_but you were still sitting there_

_when the smoke cleared..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Friday Nov 23, 2007, 8:30 am

.

"Excuse me, sir, can I help you?" Chuck approached his former friend careful to check whether anyone could overhear them.

"Yes, thank you," Bryce replied, "These HD screens almost look like the real thing."

"Yeah, they do, huh?" Chuck answered awkwardly, still uncertain how to address the elephant in the room.

"So...that was Morgan?" Bryce asked about the other Buy More worker who identified him as his own doppelgänger.

"What?" Chuck looked around, "Did he make you?"

Bryce smiled at Chuck's attempt at spy lingo. "Yeah, but I played it off. But what he said, about ruining your life... that was never my intention Chuck."

Chuck processed that for a moment not realizing that Sarah had approached and was eavesdropping on their interaction. It was something he had been thinking about for a while. Ever since their trip to Stanford. That he once had the world on a string, a future served on a platter, even if both string and platter were the product of all his hard work and his true potential. That, after a friend's betrayal, he had folded and lost all motivation to succeed was his failure.

And his alone.

"I know," he eventually offered, "Now. I saw what you did. I know you thought it was the right thing. Everything after that? Well, I... I could have taken charge of my own life. Took me a while to figure that out - too long, in fact - but that's not on you, Bryce."

Sarah watched and listened as Chuck gave voice to something she had known about him all along. That he was far more than his past perceived failures.

For Bryce, it was more forgiveness than he felt like he deserved and Bryce continued his attempt to clear the air. "You know, I didn't mean to offend you, last night. About living with your sister. Sarah told me about your team, what you've done together."

"And you're still the superspy, right?"

Bryce couldn't allow that to stand. Chuck was still the best man he'd ever known and he couldn't bear him thinking he had betrayed him. "It's nothing. I got one friend in this world. You got a home and a store full of them."

Sarah recoiled a little at that, knowing she had no real reason to. Whatever she and Bryce once had, she could now perceive that they were never really friends. It was her way - using half-truths to tell lies - but she hadn't lied to Chuck when he had first asked her about Bryce weeks ago. The two of them were never really close. Everything was easier that way.

"So what happens now, Bryce? You just disappear all over again?"

"That's what I do well." Bryce didn't expect to ever see his friend again but was glad to have this opportunity and extended his hand. "Thanks, Chuck. For everything."

"Yeah. You're welcome."

Sarah watched them shake hands. Chuck finally forgiving and letting go of past hurts. Not even digging deeply into the details. Just accepting an apology and taking responsibility for charting his own path. If nothing else, maybe this little interruption had given him that closure. And the ability to one day move forward and become the success she knew he could be.

It was past time to go and Sarah finally stepped forward. "I'm taking him in, Chuck. You stay here."

"Right. Stay in the store, Chuck," he mumbled to himself, certain that the two super spies were leaving him behind.

Sarah looked back to give Chuck a little twitch of a smile on her way out. Something to indicate what an amazing man she thought he was.

Not knowing that Chuck was left wondering if he would ever see her again

.

* * *

.

En Route to CIA Safe House, Woodland Hills, CA; Friday, Nov 23, 2007; 9:15 am

.

"Are we good?" Bryce asked.

Sarah glanced through the rear windscreen behind her, scanned for trouble and finally asserted "Yeah, we're clear."

"No," Bryce emphasized, "Us."

She knew some version of this question was coming even as she evaded the same questions from Chuck. He had to understand. This was different. Sure, she had quit him a few times but they always seemed to reestablish old habits eventually. But, here? Now?

She had been told he was dead. Seen his casket lowered into the cold ground.

And met someone who made her feel more human than even Bryce ever had.

Moved on.

"I thought you were dead, Bryce."

"Come back with me." Bryce suggested simply. And it was still slightly tempting. The continuation of their adventures. But she hid behind a half-truth.

"I have my assignment."

"You were never good at this," Bryce teased, sure that there was something she was holding back, "The saying your feelings part."

"Well," she hedged, realizing he was letting her off the hook - not challenging - not pushing - not making her anything better than she was, "I don't like to talk much."

She thought that maybe she should take it upon herself to start challenging some things in her life as he leaned toward her. She was still torn between allowing it one last time or pushing him away, only barely registering the blur of motion behind Bryce with a sharp intake of breath the instant before a van slammed into the side of their car.

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Friday, Nov 23, 2007, 11:15 am

.

"You say more than one word and I'll kill him right here."

Chuck felt Tommy Delgado - black ops veteran and apparent muscle for a shadowy faction within the CIA called Fulcrum - dig the barrel of the pistol into his back and then looked at a frantic, oblivious Jeff Barnes - a man Chuck had recruited for the Nerd Herd for his expertise on older systems.

A complete burnout now but once a relative genius in his field added to his team. His non-spy team. A team of oddballs and rejects each social disasters in their own gloriously broken ways but all capable of so much more on the rare occasions when they actually tried. They were the reclamation projects he had lost himself in rather than fixing himself. Jeff was his responsibility in more ways than just his suggestion that Bryce's handover be carried out here.

Chuck considered just rudely brushing past him. Anything that would get Tommy out of the store full of people. But Jeff had that infrequent, semi-alert look on his face, he was waiting for instruction and would carry it out if it meant a reprieve from the swarms of shoppers. It was the same coherence he had at Morgan's Black Friday training - when Morgan and his team of nerds had discussed Black Swans and impossible events that change everything - and tropical fruit.

And Chuck said exactly one word.

Jeff ran off as Chuck expected but didn't immediately raise the alarm himself so Chuck stalled, "What _did_ Larkin tell you about this computer you're looking for?"

"We'll have plenty of time to talk about all of that," Tommy smiled, "Why he came to you, how his old partner Walker is involved, how he-"

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency," Morgan's voice came over his megaphone at the Nerd Herd desk and it was Chuck's turn to smile as the shoppers still crowding the aisles were all suddenly on high alert, "I need everyone to leave the store in an orderly fashion. Anna..." Morgan called to his girlfriend as he paused before giving the order.

The single word Chuck had said to Jeff.

"...Pineapple."

.

* * *

.

All hell broke loose when Anna pulled the fire alarm as often is the case when calling for an orderly evacuation. It was exactly the distraction Casey needed to, in one twisting move, disable and disarm the two men holding him at gunpoint.

Chuck hoped Tommy only thought he was trying to save the civilians in the store - which he was, he realized - when a frantic shopper bumped into the two of them hard enough to separated them. Casey took the opportunity to grab him and carry him into the media room. As Chuck looked back, the truly disturbing thing was that Tommy just stood there looking only mildly irritated and Chuck couldn't help but remember the exchange Tommy had with Bryce in the elevator of a CIA facility.

_This is me being reasonable_, and once it was clear that he was someone even Bryce was afraid of, _You're gonna run, aren't you?_

And when Bryce had nodded Tommy had smiled that same sinister smile he was sporting right now.

_Good._

"Code Black," Casey spoke into his phone, "Hostiles in the Buy More. I need a containment team right away."

Chuck had barely a moment to consider who Casey might be calling. Who knew about the Buy More and what team might be available at a moment's notice or how far they were when Casey reached under the media room coffee table to open a secret cache of weapons.

"Are you kidding me?" Chuck blurted, "Some kid could find this."

He quickly became aware - as Casey told him to get down - that Casey had called for a containment team. Containment implying 'after'. This was the John Casey he had met that first night and the look on his face wasn't very different than the look he had seen on Tommy Delgado's. As frightening as Tommy was, Chuck was glad Casey was on his side.

Bryce and Sarah had been captured if Tommy was to be believed and he didn't seem like the joking type. And when the shooting started - and a decidedly un-neutralized John Casey reveled in doing what he does best - John Woo style with two unnecessarily silenced pistols - Chuck realized this was their last stand.

Chuck briefly considered the open drawer of weapons, both wishing they had and relieved that they hadn't begun Casey's promised weapons training with all the recent turmoil over the past couple of weeks.

He looked out into the store to see how well Casey was containing the remaining men - watching for approaches from either flank - when he saw a figure darting across the tops of the merchandise counters dodging the items on display and a flash of blonde hair darting down an adjacent aisle unseen by their assailants until it was too late for them.

Chuck watched from cover as the synchronized dance that was Bryce Larkin and Sarah Walker fighting in tandem unfolded. When one went low, the other went high, Sarah rolling off Bryce's back at one point. Both covering the other's blind spots and neither concerned about covering their own back.

He fought down the flashes - the hummingbird attempting to make more than one appearance - images of Bryce and his training. Several snippets of references to 'Omaha' - training films with frames including something similar to but different than Intersect coding in conjunction with Bryce's training which must have been how Bryce knew it was some sort of military program that he wanted to keep Chuck away from.

And mid-fight he watched Bryce and Sarah share a look - something he could never hope to see from her - a look that said this was what they did best and they still had it and that each completely trusted the other with their very life before turning back-to-back and resuming the fight doing exactly that. Each covering the other's blind spots, as they fought off Tommy's men and Chuck couldn't help but appreciate why they had been such a successful pairing and what Sarah saw in his former friend even commenting softly "They really are great."

Casey tried to pull him away using the distraction to their advantage, even as Chuck watched the two partners annihilate the remaining resistance - Sarah with a boombox across two of the men's heads - did Chuck realize that Tommy himself was not among the combatants. Neither Casey nor Chuck saw or anticipated Tommy waiting to pistol whip Casey when they exited the media room.

Chuck cursed his own incompetence again - his inability to do anything remotely resembling what Bryce could do - be anything resembling the partner that Bryce could be - as he stood with weapons held by both Bryce and Sarah drawn in his direction, Tommy holding him by the back of his shirt with his gun barrel against the back of his head as Bryce asked him a simple question in Klingon.

He sighed as he answered with a single word, also in Klingon, knowing exactly what Bryce had in mind and thankful that Bryce had insisted he wear the bulletproof vest liberated from its original owner two days ago.

"kHi-Ja."

Even as he fell Chuck wished he could explain to her when he saw the shocked expression on Sarah's face after Bryce acknowledged his answer by saying "Sorry, Chuck", the muzzle of Bryce's gun flashed and an unseen force simultaneously kicked him squarely in the chest knocking him senseless as he fell in a heap on the floor.

.

* * *

_TO BE CONTINUED..._


	23. XXIII: Reunions and Partings (2:2)

...wherein an old friend, partner, lover and betrayer returns with information and an enticing offer...

Canon Reference: The remainder of Episode 110 'Nemesis' and slightly after (off screen)

Contents: The continuation of the previous installment; three chapters (70 - 72); each one again with a past and present element, and each beginning in the past with a Bryce / Sarah flashback scene before returning to 'present' day (canon).

A/N: Bryce didn't come off looking _too_ bad in those previous three chapters, did he? Let's see if you feel the same way after this...

.

* * *

.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to The Eagles' _Life in the Fast Lane_ (chapter titles), Ani DiFranco's _Gravel_ or _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXIII - Reunions and Partings (2 of 2)

* * *

.

070: Nasty Reputation

.

Langley, VA; Oct 29, 2005

.

Agent Walker's reaction at the idea of posing as a married couple was not as intense as Graham had expected. She had even waggled the finger sporting her new wedding set at Larkin before removing the two rings and securing them in the breast pocket of her suit jacket. The first action would have been inconsequential to most people other than Agent Walker and unnoticed by most people other than Director Graham but - seeing her smile at, joke with and possibly flirt with her partner a bit - only emboldened Graham to pursue this idea.

She had been partnered with Larkin for several months over which time they had run a dozen successful missions perfectly. The nice thing about both Walker and Larkin was that they didn't need support teams most of the time and used their ability to call in such additional resources judiciously. He had plenty of solo work to keep them both busy when he didn't have a need for two of his best agents to work in tandem but Graham was extremely satisfied with the results.

She executed her solo missions with her usual efficiency but her mental state was much more stable. It was confirmation of what he had observed of her when partnered with his multi-agency 'CAT' squad - until she felt one of them had betrayed her trust. Who would have thought that his Wild Card performed best when working - at least occasionally - _with_ people? Graham had decided that was something he would like to maintain as long as possible.

Walker and Larkin each reviewed their folders as Graham provided the briefing on the Bogotá mission. It was relatively low risk in case this blew up in his face. When Walker reached the appropriate page in the file Graham could see the long unused encoding take root.

Larkin was still engrossed in his own materials and did not see the brief blankness in her expression. Deb was pissed at the idea but she was the one who suggested a partner for Walker in the first place and - even though Graham reminded her that her approval was not required or even sought - she eventually admitted that she was much less concerned about Walker's frame of mind recently.

"Walker, dismissed. Larkin, a word." Sarah looked back as she rose, surprised at Bryce being held back.

"I'll catch up. We can grind our cover," Bryce said and Sarah nodded.

That was what they called it: 'grinding a cover'. Trying to poke holes in each other's stories, filling in the gaps as they saw fit or changing things in a way that seemed more natural to them. Bryce meant nothing more than that by it and Sarah read nothing more into it.

Once she had left, Graham gestured for Larkin to resume his seat as Graham did the same.

Graham leaned forward with his elbows on his desk, tented his fingers and started with "Bryce," which got Larkin's attention. "You know Agent Walker is my best," Graham declared.

"Yes sir," Larkin answered. It was obvious when he worked with her and he could understand if Graham had a soft spot for her.

"She's also one of the first Agents to undergo _some_ of the same Omaha training that you have."

"I see sir."

Graham smirked at that. That was never good.

"No. You don't. You don't know shit Larkin."

Bryce straightened at the reversion to his family name and decided to keep his mouth shut as Graham continued.

"She's my best. She's also the reason I could drop you off the edge of the planet and make a dozen more just like you."

Graham knew his Agents. This challenge to Larkin's ego would make him more inclined to act in predictable ways. Graham waited until Larkin seemed suitably nervous before standing and pacing his office, behind Larkin, forcing the Agent to turn in his seat as he continued.

"But being first means certain things aren't perfected. The early stages of the Omaha program experimented with something called behavioral overlays."

At Larkin's perfectly understandable lack of reaction to that he continued, "What that means is, certain cover identities can be imbedded with triggers that make them more... _real_ to the Agent."

"I don't understand, sir."

"Of course you don't. But all you need to understand is that I see how you look at her."

"Sir, I swear-"

"Interrupt me again and you will swear," Graham barked somehow without raising his voice and continued once the venom had dissipated from the air between the two men, "but I've also seen that she's not nearly as repulsed by you as she once was. You two work well together. You ground each other. You were good before but she makes you better. And you make her...more predictable."

Graham reached over and collected the abandoned 'Sarah Anderson' file and held it up. "This," he indicated the file, "contains a verbal trigger - a code phrase that - when paired with the name Sarah Anderson - will cement her identity in her mind. She will _be_ Sarah Anderson, at least to a stronger degree. Loving wife to one Bryce Anderson."

_That_ set off a lightbulb over Larkin's head and Graham could tell he was equal parts conflicted, repulsed and intrigued as Graham ran the entire packet through an industrial shredder in one piece.

"Tell her about this and I will know. And I will lay it all at your feet. But you can otherwise use this information as you see fit."

Larkin let enough time pass to be sure he was allowed to speak. "What's the catch, sir?"

"See," Graham smiled wolfishly. "I told her you were smarter than you looked. The catch is, it was experimental technology that has obviously been abandoned. It will only work if she is already predisposed to the idea. Already somewhat interested in you romantically. Hopefully it's just an extra nudge. Anything more than that would be so jarring that she would notice something strange. She's never been an easy read. I estimate your chances of it working at 50/50. If it doesn't, God help you. If it does, as I said, at your discretion."

Graham let it all sink in as Bryce obviously puzzled through the scenarios and his own desires.

"Any other questions, Larkin?"

After a moment, Larkin could resist no longer.

"Just one, sir," and Graham prompted him with just his expression to ask the question he knew he wanted to ask.

"What's the code phrase, sir?"

.

* * *

.

"What did he want?" Sarah asked, not using names in public, as Bryce joined her in the lobby.

Bryce looked at her and drank her in. The object of his desire for as long as he had known her. The woman who remained remarkably professionally detached but who he had hoped he had won over just a little over these past few months. Just agonizingly slowly.

She was incredibly closed off and they got along well enough but never talked about either of their pasts. Everything between them was superficial and they might both be killed before she gave in to his usually irresistible charm. In the grand scheme of things, what difference did a little nudge make?

"Just telling me not to take advantage," he answered just as vaguely, not sure whether he believed himself or could even resist such temptation.

"As if I can't handle _you_," she teased and Bryce shattered a little, "Let's get some lunch and I'll see how good a husband you are, _honey_," she continued and he shattered some more as she turned to walk toward one of the few lunch places they frequented after such briefings. Whichever it was, they would likely have to scrap it after making a show of being a married couple.

They would grind the cover, he would test his odds and, even though it would take a better man than he knew himself to be, he would see if he was able to resist the temptation.

.

* * *

.

"_...and I'll pretend this is real,_

_'cuz this is what I like best..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Friday, November 23, 2007, 11:40 am

.

Bryce shot Chuck. Right in the heart. They had a code phrase even. In that made-up language of theirs. A secret word that was Bryce's confirmation that Chuck was wearing the vest he had asked him to wear under his clothes.

She watched as Bryce collected Chuck from the floor, smiled and patted him on the back, as Chuck commented on not being told how much being shot - even with a vest - hurt.

Bryce loved Chuck, such as he could. And shot him. She had no doubt that had Chuck not been wearing the vest Bryce would have done the same thing just perhaps with slightly more strategic aim.

And Bryce loved her. Such as he could. As much as he was capable. He was like her. She didn't have to explain anything about herself. Neither of them really wanted to know the other's secrets. He was easy. And reliable. Even his unreliability was reliable.

Casey's NSA containment team showed up then under the guise of firefighters, somehow intercepting the actual alarm call and Sarah quickly realized that - based on Casey's emergency planning - Bryce was the only one whose presence they questioned. Even as she said "he's with us" she didn't fully believe it.

Sarah turned to face them both. Chuck still trying to shake off effects akin to being kicked in the chest by a mule and Bryce just as pleased with himself as he always was after defeating the odds stacked against him. She wanted to check on Chuck - make sure he was OK - but didn't want to reveal her weaknesses. Her concern for him. And open up all the questions she had been avoiding from him for the past several days.

And the familiarity of wrapping up a mission with Bryce was familiar and enticing. Another success. Restoring their partnership in an impromptu rescue mission once they figured out that Fulcrum agents knew their extraction plan and that Tommy knew of Chuck's existence.

With the situation resolved Bryce would want to talk about what he had started to ask in the car.

_"Come back with me,"_ he had said.

Here in front of her were two paths. On the left, the past that she knew - where a version of herself she didn't like very much was at least familiar if not comfortable. On the right, a shadow of the future she couldn't have. Enticingly comfortable. Alluringly warm. And completely terrifying. Obstructed by fears and insecurities and the realities of the world she came from. The world he found himself thrust into.

The easy path and the impossible one.

She couldn't face either right now. She didn't want to be who she was before and didn't want to face the possibilities that once having been that person had turned into impossibilities.

As both men looked expectantly at her, she did the safest thing she could possibly do in that moment and walked away from both.

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Friday, November 23, 2007, 1:30 pm

.

Bryce had been in the media room for ages and Sarah and Casey just tried to stay out of the NSA cleanup crew's way while their medic finished checking Chuck over. Though he was now protesting that he was fine, Sarah had insisted that he be thoroughly checked out as much to keep him occupied and give herself time to think as to ensure he didn't have a cracked rib or other undiagnosed injury.

The crew had also cleared the van she and Bryce had appropriated from their captors. They had coordinated with the surviving Agent from their transport to clear the bodies she and Bryce had left and sanitize the site, declaring it a hit and run. These NSA guys were so good she found she had nothing left to do other than wait to hear Bryce's fate and for Chuck to inevitably pick up where his questioning of their relationship had left off.

At least she had Casey as a buffer when Chuck finally moved to join them, picking up a sale sign and sitting on the counter next to Sarah with Casey behind them both.

"What are we going to do?" Chuck asked, as he surveyed the wreckage of the store.

"Relax, Chuck," Casey replied, "These are NSA cleaners. They'll have the Buy More back to normal in a jiffy."

"What's happening with Bryce?" Chuck persisted.

"He's in there giving his report," Sarah answered wondering what was going to happen next.

Just then Bryce exited the media room, dressed - for unknown reasons - in a tuxedo, and strode toward them. "It would appear, I have an new assignment," he said as he stopped in front of them.

It brought on a certain sense of nostalgia. Bryce always did look good in a tux and he knew it. But Chuck broke the spell with his surgically precise wit when he questioned the nature of the assignment.

"As a maître d'?" Chuck wisecracked and Sarah almost snorted. Casey did. Just a bit.

"Actually, it's a consulate dinner," Bryce responded vaguely but still with a hint of trying to restore some gravitas to his image, "They want me to go after Fulcrum. On my own, off the radar." Bryce looked at Sarah meaningfully as he emphasized those last few words.

"Sounds like heaven," Casey commented jealously but Sarah knew what Bryce was saying.

Graham was cutting him off. Maybe not actively burned but being sent on a mission with every appearance of still being a rogue agent made it effectively the same thing.

Performing without a net. Bait with no trap. He would have no friends and no safe harbor.

This was his penance. For involving Chuck or possibly for hiding his suitability for the Intersect. Either of his own making or Director Graham's.

Possibly both.

"That means Bryce Larkin is dead," Bryce continued simply. "And he's going to stay that way this time. Good-bye, Chuck."

Chuck tried to reconcile the idea of shaking hands with a resurrected man standing in front of him telling him he was dead again. "This is so weird. Where you going to go? Who are you going to be?"

"Sorry, not even you can know," he said before reclaiming his attache case and moving a step to his left, a member of the NSA crew waiting with a fireman's coat to cover his departure from the crowd outside.

"Sarah..." he paused before leaving her with a cryptic phrase, taking a leap of faith that it meant what he believed it meant.

"...We'll always have Omaha."

.

* * *

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Friday, November 23, 2007, moments earlier

.

"So, we're agreed?" General Beckman queried her CIA counterpart and the Agent himself, "Agent Larkin will seek out Fulcrum based on any intel acquired from Mr. Delgado and his associates as well as any future intel or insights gleaned from the Intersect. Updates will be exchanged via prearranged dead drop but that is all the support he will be provided. You are free to act on your own findings as you deem appropriate. All internal Agency indications are to be that Agent Larkin _is_ the Human Intersect and remains a fugitive from the United States government. Agent, are you sure about this? You're painting a huge target on your back."

"Yes, ma'am. Considering what I've done, trusting the wrong people and the foolish decisions I've made, its the least I can do."

It was not lost on either of his superiors that Agent Larkin meant what he had done to his friend as much as any other choice he had made. The General admired his commitment to his friend while Director Graham saw that bizarre loyalty - even after condemning Bartowski to indefinite government service and scrutiny - as part of the developing web around that young man currently hosting the only functional Intersect that represented many possible complications. Both opinions were reinforced when Bryce volunteered his opinion of his friend.

"You know, you're lucky to have him. He'll always do the right thing." Bryce said, thinking to himself, That's why I chose him.

"That being your stance is the only reason I'm willing to endorse this plan," the General clarified, "You know your role, Agent Larkin. Anyone knowing what you know poses a serious risk to Mr. Bartowski's security. Keep the attention focused on you. If captured again, you must not reveal the truth. Agent Larkin, extreme sacrifices might be required."

"I understand completely ma'am." Larkin had told most of his full story and Beckman had some degree of sympathy for Graham's agent. She was still leery of trusting him yet he was willing to put himself at risk for an old friend. Willing to accept that even being captured alive was not an option. Ultimately, that more than Graham's reassurances had convinced her of Larkin's suitability.

"Thank you, General," Director Graham chimed in, "I'm sure he understands the ramifications. If I may have a moment with my Agent?"

After General Beckman agreed and wished Agent Larkin good luck, she disconnected her end of the video conference leaving Larkin staring at a silently fuming Director Graham.

Agent Larkin decided to take the initiative.

"We both know what this is, Director," he said.

"Good. That saves us some time," Graham replied flatly. Bryce knew he was being punished for his actions but if he wanted to continue to protect Chuck in the only way he could, he would play along. "Bartowski would have been everything you claimed he would, wouldn't he Bryce?" Graham asked.

"Probably," Bryce shrugged.

Graham grunted in acknowledgment and continued, "Like the lady said, you're our bait. A diversion. Expendable. No additional resources, no backup. Your friend's so important to you? Prove it to me."

"Yes sir."

"Still, I'll give you one possible advantage. A big one."

"What's that sir?"

"Walker."

"Sir?"

"She's out there right now. Waiting to hear your fate. It wouldn't raise any suspicions if I allow additional information to leak internally that she was once your partner. Cast her as your protector, even," Graham picked at Larkin's ego.

"Delgado seems to have only been speculating about her based on your botched extraction. He was tipped off but details were limited to who was bringing you in and the route. That information appears to have been contained. He didn't trust it to his team. I prefer her on site with the actual Intersect even with that potential loose thread but she would increase your chances of survival considerably while we root out this Fulcrum group.

"We _do_ both know what this is but I'm not a completely unreasonable man. There's a job that needs doing and you have some chance of getting it done."

"I already asked her sir, she said she had her assignment."

"That's because she has a sense of _duty_, Larkin. After everything she's done, it's what keeps her going. But we both know she has her weaknesses... We'll always have Omaha."

"Sir?"

"We'll always have Omaha," Graham repeated, "I told you two years ago that the early triggers were crude. This one is a walk away code. Not a burn order for the operation but no further considerations. If she truly wants to leave with you, that's what she'll do. Then I have two rabbits for the hounds to chase. If her duty to her assignment is stronger than your partnership, I'll have to make do with one. Whether you use it - whether you just have to know - that's up to you. Just remember, whether she's with him or with you, your friend's life hangs in the balance. Good luck, Agent. Either way, you're going to need it."

.

* * *

.

Langley, VA, Director Graham's Office

.

_We'll always have Omaha._ Graham pondered the possible outcomes after he disconnected with Larkin.

The few triggers Walker still had from the early days of the Cipher project were unreliable. They had never perfected complete control. These were mere suggestions that needed the subject to already want the indicated action or behavior on some level.

This one was what he said it was. A simple 'Walk Away'. It wasn't a burn order but it explicitly allowed everyone involved to BE burned, by the agent or other parties, without reservation.

Larkin wouldn't care how it worked, he just wanted the woman he had fallen in love with. Or whatever passed for 'love' in his mind. Graham reasoned that Larkin was probably far more invested in the chase - the challenge she represented - than the woman herself. But Walker's performance had stabilized dramatically over these past two years with Larkin as a partner so Graham had no qualms about it at all. After all, if she were not attracted to Larkin on some level it wouldn't have worked.

The goodbye trigger had been imbedded in the Sarah Anderson persona. The persona overlay they had given Walker that weekend in Vegas during her training - the one they had crudely stripped the distinct memories of - had put her in bed with a man she met because _that_ version of her liked him and thought _she_ was someone else - but had left nothing of the Agent that he could use. The version of her that _was_ Sarah Anderson wasn't that sort of zombification. Sarah Anderson simply chose to accept enough of the fiction of being wife to Bryce Anderson that it overcame any other misgivings.

The Omaha trigger - despite its lame Casablanca reference - or some other form of it was imbedded in all early test subjects. The equivalent of stomping the clutch if you lose control of a powerful race car. Get the agent back to a safe zone. Everyone has a flight response - except for the agents he had engineered it out of, those he had trained to _always_ fight - his Agents were just trained to acknowledge and overcome it.

But the Omaha trigger fed on the flight response. No stronger than the goodbye trigger. Anything stronger than that had been proven to make her useless to him as an Agent. But 'flight', for Walker, meant a return to active field duty where she excelled and understood the rules. Back to the merciless jungle of a world where she had always thrived.

Graham had taken care of Fleming and now Larkin would serve a final purpose for as long as he lasted. Two down for sure. Maybe Walker would be included in that, maybe not, although he would prefer to have her around for future use. If she left with Larkin, he would only have Casey to deal with and finally Bartowski himself. He had already set his pieces such that the one Agent not under his direct control would take care of burning the op when the time was right.

And all that garbage about Walker's sense of duty was just that. Garbage. She was a runner. Had been ever since she had first hit his radar as a young girl on the run with her con man father. She loved adventure and later still dared to hope for some sort of vindication that she had made a positive difference in the world - _that_ was what drove her - redemption, not blind duty - but she had always bored easily. And dwelled on things. That's why he always kept her on the move. Never allowing any roots.

Graham felt he knew Walker. Knew what made her tick. And Larkin still offered that refuge, even if Larkin was fool enough to think that Agent Walker - Graham's beautiful nightmare - had imprinted on him like some sort of highly lethal baby duck.

She had been discovered while hiding from the real world, recruited while trying and failing miserably to rejoin it, done the types of things at his bidding over the years that prevented a person from ever rejoining it and flitted from mission to mission to keep from facing those facts.

Walker was definitely a runner. But runners are unpredictable. Larkin is not.

Walker was already flirting with her longest time spent on any given assignment and he would have to deal with that one way or another but if Larkin used the trigger - and Graham had little doubt that he would - and if Walker chose to stay, as hard as it would be for him to believe, he would have his answer.

.

* * *

.

071: Caught Up in the Race

.

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Dec. 15, 2005, 1 am

.

Emilia Lund was lying on a chaise lounge watching the light from the full moon spill over the rippling ocean, watching the light dance as the tide and waves created infinite variations across the surface of the water.

Just their third night here and she was going out of her mind.

The first day had been good. She had been glad he talked her into the trip and secured the necessary aliases and credentials. It wouldn't do for either Sarah Anderson or Sarah Walker to leave a trail in a resort town she might one day have to visit for 'business'.

He had come a day earlier to check in and greeted her when the taxi dropped her off. She had quickly changed - wanting to jump right in before she doubted it again - and they had gone straight to the beach. They played in the surf until she begged off of parasailing (having logged twenty times the jumps he had and finding it uninteresting) and sunned herself until he returned with ridiculously large Mai Tai's.

They chased each other on jet skis nearly demolishing them both on the off-limits rocky shoals. They played and laughed and drank some more, with her committing the breach of taking a few self-portraits to immortalize the trip with a private burner phone.

They cleaned up, sobered up and dressed to the nines for an opulent dinner and an evening of sultry dancing. They indulged in too much wine, too much food and each other's bodies when they returned to their room before collapsing from a combination of jet lag, sun, fresh air, inebriation, and exertion.

It had seemed like a perfect day.

Until the rumbling of a brief thunderstorm had awoken her in the early morning hours - the tiger in the night - and she found herself suffocated by Bryce's embrace. Or that of a man named Franz according to their passports.

It just didn't feel right and she found herself in this same chaise under the canopy of their cabana watching lightning light up the ocean as the storm receded that night and watching the stars flicker each night since.

Bryce - Franz - woke up the second day to a note saying she had gone for a run. She stopped after putting a few miles of space between herself and Bryce and watched the ocean rise and fall, eventually finding herself sitting by a little sheltered rock outcropping with a tidal basin at the foot of it. The tide was receding and various sea creatures who had wandered in overnight were frantically trying to escape their fatal mistake as the life-sustaining ocean left them to their fate.

Venturing into the unknown had left them trapped and dying. There was an obvious lesson there.

She watched a crab trying frantically to scurry up the steep rocks and find its proper place in the world again. She considered it for a long-while before approaching it and attempting to boost it over the rock that was currently in its way but of course it reared and snapped at her.

She got up to walk away hoping that it found some way to find enough water to survive until the next cycle of the tides. She couldn't blame the crab for doing what crabs do.

But neither could she sit and watch as it slowly suffocated in a place it did not belong.

She and Bryce had been awkward together all that day. Her playing her part - as always - and him too afraid to ask what was wrong and break the spell. Today he had gone on a fishing charter and she felt like she could breathe again. She had read some piece of trash that she immediately forgot while lying on the beach, careful to apply sun block thoroughly as her next mission was already set for Russia and she had to be sure a tan didn't make her stand out.

The nights were their same passionate dance, fulfilling in the moment but each night she found herself here on this chaise wondering whose life this was. Why a vacation felt more like a burden than a relief.

She was officially antsy. She wanted back in the field - back to the action - back where things _made sense_. She realized she had become addicted to this insane life of violence and death but it was where she truly felt like she belonged. The only place where _she_ made sense.

She looked back through the open french doors and felt slightly guilty that she hoped one of their missions had its time table moved up. She really didn't care which. It was good to have a partner again but she was leery of getting attached to someone else who would one day, inevitably, let her down.

He technically _had_ hung her out to dry on a recent mission. There were no hard feelings about it. Tactically it was the right call and she could handle herself just fine. She didn't need Bryce to save her. She expected him to make the same assessments she would with the roles reversed - read the situation and react in a way that she could anticipate. He _should_ have left her in that warehouse and ensured the package was delivered. And he did.

But he should have at least shown some regret over it. He had complete faith in her abilities. To the point that it seemed like he didn't care about her well being at all. There's a difference between professional confidence and complete lack of compassion.

She slept on the chaise again until the rising sun awoke her and she left another note saying she went for another run on the beach. No need to tell him that this was not what he had hoped for them. That this vacation had not led to some deeper connection between them. They were what they were - and that was OK.

If it couldn't be avoided, she would let the week run its course - enjoy their time here and then - when they returned to their _real_ fake lives - everything would be back to normal.

.

* * *

.

"_...and maybe you can keep me, from ever being happy,_

_but you're not going to stop me from having fun,_

_so let's go, before I change my mind..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; Friday Nov 23, 2007, 8:45 pm

.

Of course, she had almost always fallen back into bed with him at the end of nearly every mission no matter where they had left off from their previous parting. With the discrepancy between her words and actions, she could forgive him for thinking it was some kind of game.

She would plead professionalism, they would _be_ professional and perform their missions perfectly, and they would say their goodbyes early not knowing when each would actually be called away but it was rare that either was still there the next morning much less both.

Actually, they always said goodbye without saying goodbye. Bryce joked that saying it was 'hard to say goodbye' had replaced the word itself.

And here she was considering saying goodbye to Burbank.

And everything - and everyone - it contained.

She was packed. She was ready.

Ready to return to the simpler, easier life she knew just four months ago.

She looked at the dresser where the bible with flowers pressed between its pages and a little stuffed rabbit lay on top of a still unused burn bag she just couldn't bring herself to put them in. She had spent the remainder of the afternoon securing a storage unit in Santa Monica - near the beach - one large enough to store her car - and moving her few personal items there in one trip.

But she had kept these most personal items with her. The things that needed to be destroyed to sever her connection to this version of herself.

Why was this so hard? She had done it a hundred times and she would do it a hundred more if she kept her head in the game. Leave no trace of who she had been during her brief occupancy of this false life. And Chuck would be OK in Casey's care. She was relatively sure of it despite Casey's gruff exterior.

She considered leaving a note but decided it would be better if he didn't have anything to dwell on. He would get over her abrupt appearance and equally abrupt exit from his life eventually. She thought of Chuck's deliberately awful jokes in the Stanford library and his bawdy reference to Longfellow. A man who had once said "they who go feel not the pain of parting; it is they who stay behind who suffer".

She always knew she would be just another person who left him but had dared to hope she wouldn't leave yet another scar on his heart.

That was another reason the kiss in front of the bomb that wasn't a bomb had been a huge mistake. He had been coping with the false knowledge that she wasn't interested in him. Poorly and hurtfully but coping. And that kiss had stripped away her lies. Created a false impression of hope that she did not share.

Still, she reasoned, they had only known each other a couple of months. But Chuck loved intensely - if anything between them rose to that level of emotion. He loved as intensely as his sister. And even the idea of that - directed someone like her - was terrifying.

She rationalized that she would be protecting him either way. Directly, by his side, or indirectly by creating red herrings and false trails for their enemies to follow. Emotionally by keeping a wall of cold indifference between them or by removing herself entirely.

But the truth was that staying was the hard choice. The one that would make her admit, or at least face, her lies. The one that would make her deal with - or harshly ignore - their last gasp kiss at the docks. The one that would put them together in a situation that forced them to remain apart.

In some ways, she tried to convince herself, it was more fair to him - more kind - to leave now.

Bryce was easy. Easy to fall back into all her old habits, easy to be with, easy to partner with. 'Easy' defined him. And this seemed like a long term gig. Except for the minor complication of it being essentially a suicide mission.

She saw it instantly for what it was - hounds and rabbits. A favorite analogy of Graham's usually reserved for lesser Agents. She had used the analogy herself to recommend sending lesser Agents on such diversionary missions. They would be the rabbits. Let the hounds loose on them, snipe at them where they could but primarily keep them off of Chuck.

She could double their longevity. Maybe more. It didn't require thinking about these things, just survival. Although she really preferred being the hound. And if Bryce ever was in a position to betray Chuck again, she could resolve it the way Chuck had suggested if he was captured.

She cared about Bryce but she would expect him to do the same for her. Or to her.

She wrestled with the internal argument of whether she could keep him safe more effectively by leading foes away from him or by staying close. The former came with rules she understood. The latter came with questions she wasn't prepared to answer and truths she wasn't prepared to face.

She looked out her window in the general direction of Chuck's Echo Park apartment and wondered if he would ever understand - ever forgive her - when she, as she had done so many times before - as was her nature - as so many important people in his life already had - simply disappeared.

The ring of the phone was expected but startled her nonetheless. She wasn't surprised he had the number. She was surprised he waited so long but there was a consulate dinner to schmooze at. He apparently made short work of that which showed how anxious he was to contact her. And he probably planned that, if she answered, they would be able to leave right away with less chance of her changing her mind for the hundredth time.

On the way to the old-style room phone on her nightstand, a buzzing from the bed drew her attention and stopped her in her tracks. A phone that she should have already destroyed if she were going to leave showed an incoming call and a picture of Chuck on the display. She stood there for a moment thinking about the symbolism of the new and the old until both stopped ringing.

Chuck who always saw himself as second best - who needed her protection and had forgiven his long-perceived nemesis despite not getting all the answers he craved for years - and Bryce who would need her help to survive and still hadn't answered those questions.

She looked across the room and considered the third player - the most enigmatic of all - Sarah Walker - who was just now facing the fact that she was far more comfortable as a non-person than in any situation that forced her to admit she had real feelings.

Real weaknesses.

Sarah Walker had always been a suit of armor for her.

Why was she so disturbed to discover it was an empty one?

The screen of her iPhone illuminated again indicating a new voicemail from Chuck just as the room phone began to ring again and she reached uncertainly for the handset.

She knew him well enough that she could almost hear the victorious smile in his voice when he responded with the brief details she needed in response to the single word question she used to answer the phone.

She had lifted the handset even as the screen of her iPhone went dark before - without greeting or prelude - she sharply uttered the single word that seemed like both a lifeline and a noose.

"Where?"

.

* * *

.

072: Old Habits

.

DNI, Washington, D.C.; September 17, 2007, 12:35 am

.

His Fulcrum contacts had been right about the Intersect and the mysterious man within Fulcrum who had contacted him with the details and offers of assistance had been everything he had said he was.

Still the entry had not been without difficulty, even with remote access overriding most of the security protocols, and he had little time before he was caught. Bryce Larkin inserted the device into the heavily modified I/O port of the ancient terminal and initiated the compression download his contact had provided.

It gave him a few moments to think about what he knew of this Project Omaha five years ago and what he had learned recently. About the friend he had betrayed and the partner he hadn't wanted involved in all of this. And the doubts he had allowed to fester that she might somehow already be involved.

He had a little birthday gift all set to go for Chuck once he decided to accept this risky mission. A puzzle his old friend would easily solve that held an apology for what he had done to him at Stanford and for avoiding him entirely ever since to ensure that distance from an experimental government research program for which Chuck had seemed tailor made was maintained. It would automatically send it if he didn't make it out of here tonight.

It didn't reveal everything but it was the best apology he could muster. He didn't want to die with Chuck thinking he was - well, thinking he was the man that he actually was - but also not knowing that he still did consider him a great friend. And a great man. Everything he himself once aspired to be.

Hopefully, the apparent double-agent within Fulcrum was such a man. Since in a few hours that man would be in possession of the combined intel of every U.S. intelligence agency.

He should have done the same for Sarah. Apologized. He was just never very good at it. And she never believed him anyway. He was what he was. And she was too smart not to see through him.

He had hoped she would come to truly love him one day but too much of the man he once was - the man he thought might have had a chance at being deserving of such a blessing - had been slipping away piece by piece for a long time before he met her. But she had been something of a touchstone for him. Someone who made him want to be better, even though he almost always fell short. It was always enough to simply be together for the brief moments they were allowed than to try to be more.

As little as she spoke about her past or her feelings he hoped he had been something similar for her despite his devious initiation of their so-called relationship. His musings were interrupted by the expected message on the screen.

Compression Completed:  
Extract Files and Initiate System Overload Cascade?

Bryce Larkin put on his protective eyewear, took a deep breath and thought again of the woman he would likely never see again. Before initiating the destruction protocol, he muttered his regrets into the glaringly bright and empty white room - a farewell that was equal parts a tainted 'I Love You' and a more sinister lie built upon lies - as he pressed the required key.

"Its hard to say goodbye."

.

* * *

.

"_...and you were never very kind_

_and you let me way down every time_

_but, oh, oh, oh what can I say?_

_I adore you..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

.

Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, CA; Nov 23, 2007, 9:20 pm

.

He found her by the rail overlooking the city below and felt the relief wash over him. He had told her to meet him here but watched her car arrive and then watched her settle in to their designated meeting place for a few minutes before approaching.

He did so carefully stopping a few paces away, afraid that she was just an illusion.

"I'm glad you came," he said softly.

She turned to face him and her small, inscrutable smile was all the encouragement he needed to close the distance and pull her into a kiss. She couldn't help but let herself sink into it for a moment. It still felt so familiar and good but no longer felt right. So...easy.

But easy was no longer what she longed for. No longer filled the need inside.

And its not why she came. But they were always good at this part and she found that her hand had involuntarily found its way to the front of his shirt. She deliberately opened it to rest her palm upon his chest and focused one last time on the feel of his lips on hers. It isn't fair that she was the only one of the two who knows what this kiss likely truly meant but she let it continue a moment longer before extending her arm gently but firmly, pushing him away.

"That's not what I came for, Bryce."

"But its what we do best," he offered his most winning smile but was met with a blank expression. Even though she had to admit he was right about that - that it was at least one of the things they did best - she gave no indication of it. Not a frown, not a smile. Nothing.

"I see," he continued, wondering if there was any chance of her leaving California with him tonight, "So what _did_ you come for?"

"Answers." He was the only one who has them and she knew she was the only person with a prayer of getting them from him.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know, Sarah." She studied him for a moment and considered that maybe he would, for once, be completely honest with her. That would be a first but only because he saw it as his only option of getting what he wanted.

Her.

Sarah turned and resumed her pose leaning against the rail and spoke into the night. "Three questions. First, why did you leave me holding the bag?"

Bryce joined her and sighed before saying, "I didn't want you involved. This was an internal strike. I didn't know if I could trust what I was being told. Wasn't even sure it was the right thing to do."

_Didn't trust me_, she thought, shelving that line of inquiry for a moment, but only said, "But you did it anyway."

"I did."

"Which brings us to my second question. Maybe it will shed some light on the first. Why did you really destroy the Intersect? Why did operation Sand Wall call for us to destroy our own project?"

"That wasn't exactly how it happened. I didn't tell Graham everything," Sarah turned to look at him but Bryce remained leaning against the rail looking out into the night. "I told him I infiltrated Fulcrum and that Sand Wall was a seemingly fully authorized mission to steal the Intersect and destroy the research facility."

"But that's not what really happened?" Sarah prompted.

Bryce shook his head. "No. Fulcrum concocted part of Sand Wall to make it look like _they_ were the ones liberating the Intersect from a splinter faction of the CIA," Bryce considered for a moment that maybe, knowing what little he did of Graham's machinations over the years, a valid case could be made to support that story.

"But it was bigger than that. Sand Wall was meant to get me recruited by Fulcrum," he continued. "I let them bring up the Intersect. There was a vague connection between me and it. It was someone else entirely - someone I kept secret - who set the whole thing up and helped me destroy it."

"Who? And that's not one of my three."

"I don't know," Sarah stood fully and looked at him in disbelief. "I know, I know, but you had to talk to him. He was working with them but not _for_ them. He said they were just a means to an end. And he knew everything. I mean _everything_. Not just all the inner workings and how to destroy it but everything about me. Every secret, horrible thing I've ever done and hoped no one would ever know I'd done. Everyone else I've ever worked with and their secrets too."

Bryce paused and looked over at her with something she was unaccustomed to seeing from him.

Pity.

And she didn't like it.

"What?"

"I'm sorry but he told me a lot about you too. Things I didn't know because I never asked and because you and I never talk about those things. I didn't mean to pry he just put it out there. He told me...he told me some of what they did to you," Bryce did not clarify that there were other things he knew in other ways, "God, Sarah, is it true that you were fifteen when-"

"I'm not fifteen anymore!" Sarah snapped. There was a reason they never talked about these things. And it was the answer to a question she had avoided asking directly.

It was why Bryce hadn't trusted her.

Someone had done the very thing she feared and told someone close to her all of her secrets. All of her horrible, wicked secrets and Bryce didn't need to ask if any of it was true because he had done things just as awful. If this person Bryce talked to knew her true age when she was recruited then he knew things she was relatively certain even Graham didn't know about her.

Bryce had not trusted her because the curtain had been pulled back and he saw her for what she really was.

Even so, that wasn't who she wanted to be anymore. And maybe she wasn't about to let Bryce off the hook for assuming that she could never be anything more than the monster she had been as she resumed her pose leaning against the rail and continued, "I'm not the one who couldn't be trusted. _You_ left _me_. To deal with the fallout of what _you_ did."

"I did. I thought it would be best to go it alone. This guy - my contact within Fulcrum - he knew things way beyond my clearance or yours. He said the Intersect was going to be used in ways he never intended. That it was an abomination. That it destroyed everyone involved with it. That you and I and all of Graham's 'specials' - he used Graham's term - were part of it. That it had to be destroyed. Sand Wall got me in with Fulcrum, Fulcrum wanted me to steal the Intersect but he convinced me and I chose to blow it up. And to steal it, but not for them."

"I think we need to get back to that, but first let's tackle my third question. You dodged it when we asked you before. Why Chuck?"

"You really care about him, huh?"

"Irrelevant, Bryce. I'm here to protect him and I want to know why you made that necessary."

"Fair enough," Bryce sighed. "Do you know what it was designed for? The Intersect? It was meant to protect people. That's another thing my contact told me. That he wasn't an Agent; he was once a scientist. The Intersect was meant to be his baby. His redemption. But he included some sort of a backdoor for himself that he said he shouldn't have. He had been working with the NSA in secret but caught wind of the research on his old designs when the CIA got involved in the project. He quit and disappeared before the Intersect was functional - said it was getting into dangerous territory - but he kept tabs on things.

"They couldn't make it work without combining it with something else. Another project of his he thought was buried. He told me the other thing used some of the same principles and they were able to use it to make the Intersect work. But he had been following the research and realized that - if they looked hard enough - if they asked the right questions - they would figure out that they could also do the opposite. They could reopen the original project."

"Meaning what?"

"Weaponize it. Weaponize the Intersect. Combine the intel analysis portion with something else - trying to create some kind of super agents. Use it to teach ordinary people to be agents - killers - like us almost instantaneously. He said he never meant for the entire database to be hosted by a person. He said that was his mistake. His backdoor. But instead of a machine that can almost predict the future based on interpretation of intelligence, you'd have armies of highly-trained Manchurian candidates if you wanted."

"Manchurian candidates?"

"Sleepers."

"But what you sent to Chuck-" Sarah started to ask with a tiny bit of panic but Bryce cut her off.

"Was just the good stuff. The intel. I bet he's really good with it too. Looking for patterns, figuring out what people are up to based on other seemingly unrelated things. It's the good idea they intended for a computer to do. None of the military or special ops stuff Graham apparently wants to use to 'super-charge' an ordinary person. That part would still take someone with the right brain functions but not nearly as rare as Chuck. Besides, if you can make more any time you want, why would you care if you fry some of their brains? Disposable heroes, Sarah. And I couldn't let it go to the people they had in mind."

"Explain," she said simply. They were all disposable heroes to Graham. It was up to you to keep yourself alive. But Bryce was always looking for short cuts and she thought that he may have just been miffed that he wasn't among Graham's chosen few.

"There were eight candidates for Graham's enhanced version of the Intersect. The one he was working on while he was _supposed_ to be collaborating with the NSA. The culmination of Project Omaha. Five of the candidates were suspected of at least being connected to Fulcrum and highly recruitable if they weren't already aligned with them. I had to stop them from getting that kind of power. This guy-"

"Enough of that. What guy, Bryce?"

"I know how it sounds but he knew things. Things that backed up everything he was saying. Said he could rig the supercooling systems to blow remotely but couldn't synchronize it perfectly and the remaining servers would shut down if one blew early. He wasn't sure it would be enough and needed someone to plant two additional charges and put a cascade trigger in the main terminal. I couldn't believe it, it was on an ancient Macintosh-"

"Bryce! The guy?"

Just then a security guard interrupted their conversation, "Fifteen minutes until we close folks," he pointed out helpfully.

Sarah put on her best smile and thanked the man who reluctantly moved along even though the two visitors were in no hurry to leave. When he was out of earshot Sarah prompted Bryce to continue. "You heard the man, Bryce. Fifteen minutes to convince me you did the right thing. Who's the guy?"

"He called himself Hunter," Bryce began and Sarah rolled her eyes at the laughably easily-identified CIA-throwaway alias. Agent Hunter, Agent Lynch, Agent White or Agent Black.

Agent Walker.

"Obviously, it was just an alias," Bryce continued. "Or a code name. Or otherwise complete bullshit. Never met him in person - everything was through a computer he provided - and he never gave me enough to quite figure out who or what he was hunting for but he said he had to have the intel to resolve an old mission. Said it was his life's work to see it through. That the lives of important people hung in the balance. Said he had no idea if there was anyone he could trust but that he knew I had once saved a potential recruit at Stanford by lying about his compatibility with the program."

"Chuck." Sarah whispered.

"Right, Sarah. He knew about Chuck," Bryce emphasized, "Knew about Chuck, hadn't done anything to move against him and said he was one of many people he wanted to keep away from Graham. If he had said nothing else that would have been enough for me. Said if I wanted to help him keep Chuck - and people like him - safe, I needed to help him stop the project. I said I did and then I did what he asked. I stole the intel and blew up the system.

"But I had been thinking about the people on Graham's list. I mean, the agents Graham chose. They're the worst of the worst. They get results but they're absolutely ruthless. Like the stories about Graham when he was an agent. This Hunter guy, he showed me all the profiles. I've met a couple but when you see it like that - in black and white - they're friggin' monsters. They keep up appearances - mostly - but they're all monsters underneath. It was a wake up call."

"I'm not following."

Bryce leaned over with his elbows on the rail and lowered his head, pausing before explaining quietly into the darkness, "My name was on the list."

He was quiet for a few moments. Long enough for Sarah to figure out what he wasn't saying. This 'Hunter' had told Bryce about her recruitment at fifteen, chances are he knew - and shared - much, much more about Graham's Wild Card Enforcer.

_I've met a couple._

Chances are that _she_ was on the list too.

"When that bullet knocked me on my ass and I lay there bleeding, barely able to move at all," Bryce resumed his tale, "all I could think was that it shouldn't have gone to any of them but it shouldn't have gone to me either. My primary mission was to preserve the intel. It was still important. Still capable of being the force for good that this Hunter guy said it was meant to be. I had already been thinking that when I got away, instead of transmitting it to Hunter, I would buy some time to figure out more about this guy, insist on a meet, maybe uncover Fulcrum. But Casey was waiting for me," Bryce laughed at the memory of it, "He told me to freeze _after_ he shot me. I was out of time and it had to go to someone. I had to hide it somewhere-"

"And you chose your best friend's brain, Bryce?! His brain! How could you do that to someone you called a friend?"

"You're right. Of course, you're right. But Sarah, it's not like I cracked his head open and burned my initials into his brain, I knew he could handle it. I _knew_ it, I wasn't guessing. I knew because I was his friend. And so did Hunter but he probably thinks the intel was just lost. That I only completed one of my objectives. We both wanted to keep Chuck out of it but with Casey about to finish me off and no way to escape, I had just a few seconds to decide.

"If I hadn't downloaded it at all, just destroyed it, there would be no choice to make. But Hunter's device didn't allow for that. And there was no one I trusted with it. It had to go to someone better than me. Better than any spy I knew. Not some guy who said all the right things and _seemed_ on the up and up. It had to go to someone beyond reproach."

Bryce sighed, "I had just a second or two to make a decision, Sarah. Even if I _didn't_ know that he could handle it...How could I _not_ think of him?"

Sarah understood. She had seen Chuck in action. The lack of ego. The eagerness to get to the root of a problem. Even at the risk to his own health. The bravery in the face of danger. She almost felt pity for Bryce - saw a shadow of the man he could have been - a better man who a better version of her could possibly have loved - and that made her reconsider her decision for the hundredth time until he forced his point too far and said something that changed everything.

"You would have done the same if you knew what I knew. If you absolutely knew it would work."

She hated Bryce in that moment. Absolutely hated him.

Because, she thought, he was right - clinically detached, with the same information and in the same scenario - two months ago she would have done the same thing. Would have sent the information to some poor sap named Chuck Bartowski and trusted him to use it wisely or for it to remain hidden or to die with him.

But she didn't know the man in question at the time. Bryce did.

Sarah looked down over the sprawl of the outskirts of Los Angeles below - in the general direction of the man in question - likely wondering where she was and why her phone was off.

Because to know enough about Charles Irving Bartowski to trust him with the secrets of a nation required that you know the man well. And knowing him well almost ensured that you would care what happened to him. About his well being. About his future.

And knowing the fate you to which you would be condemning him by doing it, maybe even the Sarah from two months ago would have reconsidered doing what Bryce had done.

She considered that maybe she didn't _want_ to be the type of person who could have done what Bryce had done - that she wanted to be the type of person who didn't even consider doing that to another human being no matter how well she did or did not know him - and realized Bryce was trying to convince himself of the rightness of his own actions when he began to speak again.

"I had a birthday message ready to send to Chuck in case I didn't make it," Bryce said softly. "I wanted to make amends - apologize for some things like Stanford and tell him as much as I could about why I did what I did. I had this goofy word puzzle - an inside joke - something only he would know how to answer - set as the key and I switched the upload message from my pathetic apology to the Intersect files in the stairwell on the way out of the building. Just in case.

"Only he would know how to open it and three failures would wipe it. Once I went down, it seemed like the only choice at the time. I should have secured it differently. I never meant for him to _see_ it. Not really," and Sarah understood what Bryce had not yet admitted to himself, that he never really properly considered the consequences, "When I thought about what it might do to him, the fact that I knew he could physically handle it if he was exposed to it made it seem less dangerous. If you only knew what I already did to keep it away from him..."

"I do know Bryce. Some of it. I told you we saw Professor Fleming's files. He had footage of the interview you crashed. The one where you concocted your plan to get Chuck expelled. Tell me about Stanford."

"I never meant to get him expelled. I had already talked him up to Graham so much that I needed to invalidate his candidacy. He should have been allowed to graduate. Maybe with some retakes of courses of something but not-"

"What about Jill?"

Bryce seemed genuinely confused. "What about her? I tried to tell her what I could. That she shouldn't give up on him. To get his side of the story."

"That's not what Chuck thinks," Sarah said, the implications clear.

"Sarah, I'm telling you, nothing happened between me and Jill. Can you-" Bryce cut himself off having considered trying to convince her of the truth of his statement and asking her to tell Chuck he hadn't done such a thing to his friend - forgetting for a moment that he was trying to get Sarah to leave with him.

He gathered himself and took a deep breath before continuing. "Chuck was going to propose to her," that was news to Sarah. "And she and I were sort of friends too. I would never do anything like that. Even getting expelled, I was sure Chuck would be OK - with her - and his inventions and his computer skills. I mean, hell, he could have landed a job at _some_ company on skill alone. Between them, they were going to be OK. I couldn't tell her straight out but I tried to clue her in. That's all."

Sarah wanted to believe him but it was a pretty hard thing to believe given Chuck's certainty on the matter. Chuck seemed to have accepted Bryce's apology earlier even without the details. Maybe some things were better left alone.

Bryce tried to emphasize what he had sacrificed to try to save his friend from Graham's clutches. "I had to sell it, Sarah. I had to play it with Graham like I tried to manipulate Chuck's assessment in order to discredit his Agent candidacy. Had to keep away from him too. It was Graham who got him kicked out, everyone at Stanford loved Chuck. They would have kept him if they could. But you know how Graham is when he feels like someone's embarrassed him."

"Wait. Stop. Are you telling me that Graham knew who Chuck was from Day One? God," she sighed, "I should have known..."

"He and I talked about him. By name. More than once. And you know Graham never forgets - or forgives - anything."

It was Sarah's turn to breathe truths quietly into the night. Her turn to shock her former partner.

"He told me to kill him."

It was Bryce's turn to face his former partner more fully and read her response as she continued. He suspected no one had lived after such an order to her before. "Graham. My first couple of days here. 'If he runs, kill him.' he said. He really does have it in for him."

"Play Graham in your head for a second," Bryce said, "You know how he is. How unforgiving he is. I convinced him Chuck was a bad bet. That I had exaggerated his talents when I didn't exaggerate a thing. Have you seen him hack a system? If you get the chance and he says he can do it, let him. He's that good. But then those fucking tests...I swear Sarah its like the damn thing was designed for him, specifically.

"I'm sorry everything turned out so badly for him but you have to believe me, he'd still be hooked to machines right now - picking his brain apart - if I hadn't done it. Or maybe they would have learned all they could from him by now and disposed of him. Or Graham would have done what I stupidly suggested and made him an Agent. You know him now, Sarah. Can you imagine if they had turned him into someone like us?"

She couldn't imagine that. Any of it. She didn't even want to try.

Which made her wonder why Bryce had. "Why'd you suggest it in the first fucking place then?"

"Because I was selfish. And thought it was all fun and games. I hadn't finished my own training yet. Just been recruited a year before. Then senior year, I've got Graham all excited to recruit and train Chuck in a beefed up Field Analyst role. I even talked Graham into an awesome code name for him. He would have loved it. My best friend - my only _real_ friend - is going to be on my team. But first, Graham sends me on this mission..."

Bryce paused while considering how much to share. But then again, he had been told some of her secrets. It was only fair. "...there was this girl that worked at a lab attached to a Russian munitions factory in their research and development-."

"Jesus, Bryce..." Sarah sighed and tried not to fixate on every negative part of Bryce she had seen over the past two years.

Maybe he wasn't the same man he was then. Maybe he wanted to be more. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

"I know. It gets worse," Bryce hesitated again, but this was what caused him to betray his friend and it was important to him that someone understand even though he couldn't face her while he explained it.

"She was super smart. Like you but more techie. She figured me out. But she was falling for me despite her doubts and when she confronted me I played it up like I was too. Told her I didn't care about her work, that my superiors weren't going to get any more from me, that we could run away together. I figured if I got her to defect, that's a win right?

"Not the win he had in mind?"

"Graham said if we gave her asylum, the Russians would know that we knew what she knew. Like it was some kind of Laurel and Hardy bit. She had to die, it had to look like an accident and we needed access to her files before we got rid of her. I objected but he said some things that seemed terribly rational and important at the time and reiterated what I was to do and it suddenly seemed more reasonable. Like I just needed to hear it one more time..."

Bryce trailed off, wondering for the first time, having tried very hard to not think about that woman and that mission for almost five years now, if Graham had at any point used some form of 'we'll always have Omaha' on him.

"What happened then?" Sarah prompted him to continue.

"Gas explosion, they weren't completely uncommon in the buildings like the one she lived in. Old construction. But my orders were not until after I had gotten everything I could get out of her and put her down. She thought I was joking at first. I did my job too well."

Bryce held back a few details. That Natasha really loved him. How he still thought about what it must have been like to wait two weeks to see him, kiss him 'Hello' and then wake up tied to a kitchen chair. The look of betrayal on her face and the complete meltdown afterward. He didn't have to do much to get her to talk but considered maybe he broke her in other ways.

There are worse things than pain.

"I couldn't face her to do it but...I had very clear orders. I left her in the gas. Let her go to sleep before it blew. That was my mistake. The blast pretty much ripped the building in half instead of blowing out just her apartment."

They were both quiet for a few minutes with this new truth heavy in the air between them. Bryce knew he had killed more people than his target with his indecisiveness that day. And Sarah knew how she had felt after a surprise order tacked onto a supposed training mission in Paris.

"So that's why you did what Chuck thought was you turning on him? Why you got Fleming to help you discredit him? Your Red Test."

"Yes and no. That wasn't good enough for Graham to qualify as my Red Test. He commended me for my creativity in making it look like an accident. Laughed about it when he called it overkill but effective. Still, I don't think he believed me when I said that I killed her before the explosion or used it to hide cause of death. So I had another one lined up right away. He figured I was either the mad dog he wanted and it went down the way I said it did or that I did it that way because I couldn't face her. He gave me something up close and personal. Straight assassination."

Bryce considered that it was the second one that destroyed him. That convinced him to save Chuck no matter what it took. Because by the time he stabbed his second target in an alleyway in Brazil he had become the monster Graham wanted. After killing a woman who loved him - and eleven other people in a sloppy attempt to hide it - after feeling nothing when he executed a man not even bothering to research the reason for Graham's selection of him - he no longer belonged anywhere near his friend anyway.

Unlike Sarah he had joined willingly, not been forced into it at an age when most people are just starting high school.

And maybe he had been waiting all these years to get back at Graham somehow for the whole affair.

"But yeah," he continued dryly, "the stuff with Chuck happened right after both. Chuck thought I had been away on a study abroad program the summer and fall when I was in training. I just couldn't let him get involved in anything like that."

She left him to his thoughts for a moment, clearly raw and exposed from what he had shared. If only they had trusted each other with such things before, maybe they could have actually been something more to one another.

But it was clear to her now that her place was not with him. That it never had been. That wasn't the way to become the person she wanted to be. Or even how she would figure out what that person looked like.

They would fall into old habits and all of this reflection would be for nothing.

_He_ was the bad bet.

She followed that thought and considered what passed for her romantic life as a casino. Bryce was a craps table. Small bets, small payoffs. Fun for a while but it will bleed you dry. You had to know when - and be able - to walk away.

Chuck was an all-in, single spin of a roulette wheel. Huge risk, huge payoff. Near impossibility of walking away a winner but worth it if you could do what was necessary. If you were willing to place the bet. If you were willing to lose everything.

She just wasn't prepared to do what was necessary. To open up about all those secrets this Hunter had exposed to Bryce. Bryce now knew at least some of her secrets and shared some of his own and it had put a wall of distrust and discomfort between them. Chuck would one day stumble into all the same knowledge about her and the roulette wheel would fly off its spindle completely.

This was no longer about _who_ she wanted. The safest bet there was to just keep her damn chips off the table.

But it could be about _what_ she wanted. At least a little bit. About who she wanted to be. Knowing all of that, it would still be easy to leave with Bryce - still be hard to face Chuck knowing what he now strongly suspects about her attraction to him and all her reasons why they can't be more that she isn't even able to adequately explain - but there's a bigger world out there if she can just find a way to rejoin it.

Chuck - and his sister, and her boyfriend, and Chuck's friends - have shown her that there are people in the world who aren't just out for themselves yet aren't the fools she had always been taught they were. Maybe she could be just a little bit more like them.

Lights around the observatory were systematically extinguishing. It was a matter of time before their nightwatchman friend ended this conversation for them and she had a few more questions.

"We'll always have Omaha?" she asked, having not recognized that distinct code phrase but recognizing it for what it was. Having made preparations to leave with him, considering whether it was the right choice and waiting for the call that had brought her here tonight with her mind still not made up.

"Graham said it was a Walk Away code," and faced with the opportunity to come clean Bryce took the cowardly option, "Said it was up to you."

And that much was true. Some erratic features of an incarnation prior to his own involvement in Project Omaha. He knew they had attempted to embed such triggers during her training. That they still required her to naturally lean one way or another.

He had dared to hope she had chosen him when she met him here tonight.

Bryce didn't share his full knowledge of the Omaha Project he had once wanted to keep Chuck far away from. Why he knew Hunter was speaking at least some truths. Why he and Sarah fought so similarly. If it was something more than similar training. The mind-control aspects they haven't perfected but used on her to some degree. His complicity in using it against her.

He knew she would only walk away with him if she wanted to and hoped that she did want to. She had to be inclined to do it. and he wasn't going to say anything to reduce the odds.

Revealing that knowledge would reveal his own misuse of another code phrase. What _he_ had done to her. How he had become just another force who had manipulated her. He had brushed it away as just a nudge in the right direction at the time but now saw it for the unforgivable betrayal that it was. He couldn't even share his fears that she might be safer with him if only because it removed her from Graham's spotlight on the situation.

"Come with me, Sarah," he pleaded one last time, "I want you with me on this. The Andersons together again," and at her stern look, "Or just Larkin and Walker. Either way we're unstoppable. I _need_ you with me on this."

Sarah was considering for one last time what her final decision would be. Bryce was holding back something but Sarah considered just who she actually was at that moment and who she wanted to be.

She thought she knew who she was once but maybe they had both been different people then. And she was what passed for happy with him for brief times during those years. She had been undeniably attracted to him when they met and just chose to fight it for a while. It's not as though she was capable of or free to pursue any kind of real relationship then. Or now.

She chose to compartmentalize that time where it belonged - in her past - and focus on her future. On how to figure out who she is before she can focus on who she is capable of being.

It all sounded like a load of crap to her anyway. Super-agents created with the Intersect. Then again, she did know someone with the equivalent of a supercomputer in his brain. But the key thing now was that if Graham already knew about Chuck then he also knew that Bryce had lied years ago. And might know that she and Casey had helped to hide that lie. She had never considered Graham any kind of benefactor but now she had to consider him an enemy. And had to stay close to Chuck, not risk being removed, play along to do what she had sworn to herself to do.

To protect something rare and precious. To keep a good man safe.

Bryce was doing his part to achieve that. Volunteering to hunt down Fulcrum while drawing their attention away from Chuck. As much as she wanted to entertain the idea of being someone better - something more - Chuck needed her at her best. And the best Agent Walker was not necessarily compatible with being the best version of herself.

Maybe both she and Bryce had both become something more in the time that they had been parted but that didn't mean their proper place - to see this promise through or for any other reason - was at each other's side.

She stood to her full height and Bryce did the same. "I can't go with you Bryce," she said, not feeling the need to beat him over the head with all the unflattering reasons why.

"I have to stay. I have to stay and clean up your mess," she teased, smiling playfully as she had often done with him before.

Bryce smiled back half-heartedly. He knew he had lost her. Whether it was somewhere during the course of his explanation or when he had left her to mourn him as dead and gone or somewhere in between or long before didn't matter now.

"You wanted to protect him before; its my turn now," she declared firmly.

And Bryce realized, finally and completely, that just because they were similarly broken people, even the best possible version of him was far from ever having deserved her in the first place. If he somehow managed to survive the weeks and months to come, maybe that was one of many things he could change about himself along the way.

"I'm sorry you're not coming but, since you're not, I guess I'm actually glad you're staying. I know you'll keep him safe. And tell him I'm sorry...for everything else," he said sincerely and - realizing that his failure to tell everything he knew put her at a disadvantage - offered what little advice he could while keeping his shameful secrets, "Just be careful with Graham, Sarah. I don't know what other tricks he has up his sleeve but you should be OK if you just focus on who _you_ are. On what you know is right."

Sarah smiled at the idea of either of them fighting for something just because they believed it was right. Bryce leaned in and she met him with a soft, brief kiss before pushing him gently but firmly away with a palm to the center of his chest that she slowly let fall away as their lips parted.

This isn't who she was anymore and - as overdue as it was - focusing on who she _is_ was exactly what she needed to do.

Bryce knew the meaning of this kiss and wished he had never pushed her by using the shortcut Graham had provided. Then he could have safely been entirely truthful and maybe she would have chosen him. But, of course, his own weakness was what Graham had relied on to ensure Bryce kept his secrets.

As tempting as it was, it wouldn't work now even if he tried - she had made her choice and it wasn't him - so Bryce offered up the sanitized version of their traditional farewell that it became when spoken without the name 'Sarah Anderson' attached to it before he turned to leave, saying with his roguish smile simply "It _is_ hard to say goodbye".

Sarah watched him go, safely around the corner of the building where he could no longer tempt the remnants of the version of her she no longer wanted to be into the easy, exciting and soulless life they had once led. She whispered a new answer to their traditional parting before turning back to look over the lights of the city below and gazing out into the darkness.

She whispered it to the ghost of the man he could have been - maybe even once was - where the man he had become stood moments before.

"Goodbye, Bryce."

.

* * *

.

"_...so let's go before I change my mind_

_leave the luggage of all your lies behind,_

_'cuz I am bigger than everything that came before..._"

\- Ani DiFranco, _Gravel_

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Honestly, who believes that Sarah sat there like a lump when the two phones (symbols of the old and the new) were ringing and that her choice was to do nothing at all? And we know she didn't talk to Chuck. But this last bit had to pull double duty, the secondary purpose being an explanation of 'Sand Wall' - and now that you (should) know who was behind it, it _is_ (in my mind) an amalgam of 'Sandbag' and 'Stonewall' - an Intersect related order with a false paper trail to exonerate Bryce that somehow neither Beckman nor Graham knew anything about even after the fact.

I considered warning you all up front that this part is about Sarah overcoming a cancerous relationship and choosing to turn the page but if Bryce were _that_ bad, she never could have tolerated him, they were just no good for each other. They make things too easy for each other which is why Graham likes them together. I think everyone has at least witnessed that type of relationship before. It takes them being separated for either to consider being better versions of themselves (although Sarah has a head start due to additional influences).

Bryce made two pop-culture references that went over Sarah's head but didn't warrant disclaimer / Easter egg mentions (the book and movie(s) 'The Manchurian Candidate' and Metallica's 'Disposable Heroes'). And he got off relatively easy here in terms of comeuppance but, as a character, I think his actions are more reprehensible than most portrayals I have seen. Even so - and I know many strongly dislike him and not to be 'preachy' - if he's irredeemable then it could be argued that so is Sarah.

Next time we'll look a little harder at how Sarah intends to cope with the difficult situation in which she finds herself (hint: not well) but, in my mind, this whole scenario was never about her choosing Bryce or her choosing Chuck, it was about her choosing - for maybe the first time ever - herself.

.

* * *

.

About Lyrics and Music: When I was in elementary school, my English Literature book had the lyrics to The Beatles' _Eleanor Rigby_ (which some still mistakenly refer to as _All the Lonely People_) listed under 'poetry' and I have looked at lyrics through that lens ever since.

Some songs qualify, some don't and I'm telling you people, Ani DiFranco is a lyrical genius. You'll have to listen to the song to understand why it's named 'Gravel' - and I've used it with a slightly different connotation (the heroine of the song appears to remain in that relationship) - but I've already used bits of other songs by her before (especially 'Shy') and am saving some more for specific points later. Huge inspiration.

All chapter titles in this installment and the prior one (except Ch 72 - because its about (breaking) 'Old Habits') were from / adapted from _Life in the Fast Lane_ (which most of you should know from memory and I consider a good pre-series depiction of Bryce and Sarah during their partnership; and the double meaning of 'terminally pretty' was too good to pass up) while all quotes are from _Gravel_ (in my mind the definitive Bryce Larkin theme song, at least with regard to Sarah; also the definitive 'unhealthy relationship' song).

I like the song featured in this episode a lot (_No One's Gonna Love You_ by Band of Horses) and will always associate it with Bryce and this episode. But I've also always thought its use was almost as much about Chuck / the possibility of a better relationship as it was a Bryce / the end of a relationship song.

In that regard, I also always felt like it missed the mark a bit because, as I said, I've always thought this episode (and its fallout) was about much more than simply choosing between two men...

.

* * *

.

This was a quick update because I wrote Parts 1 and 2 in their entirety before publishing Part 1. Don't get greedy! Expect future updates on no set timetable. I am trying to establish some balance and no longer frantically attempting to adhere to a bi-weekly publishing schedule Although I may. (shrug) Next one may be shorter. Or longer. Or cover more ground or less ground or who knows really...but I know you're all wondering just why that alarm clock had to die. (Despite that being the generally accepted deserved fate for all alarm clocks anywhere ever.)

So stay tuned...(psst! that's what the 'follow' button is for - hint, hint!)


	24. XXIV: What We Are

...wherein questions are avoided, denial, jealousy and petty vengeance are dealt with, and an unspoken detente is achieved although answers are reserved for a more opportune time...

Canon Reference: Episode 111 ("Crown Vic") beginning slightly before events of the episode (off screen, continuation)

Contents: Four chapters, around 20K words. Three chapters are around 4K words or slightly longer but Ch 75 is almost 7K.

A/N: Okey dokey. So, two episodes driven by lies and Lou, one driven by Bryce Larkin and now on-deck two - count 'em, TWO - episodes driven by seductions. We are in the middle of a pretty rough run but that's what I find interesting about these scenarios and the associated spy tropes. To quote Geoffrey Chaucer (okay, Paul Bettany as fake Chaucer from A Knight's Tale anyway), "All human activity lies within the artist's scope" and I'm trying to pretend I am an artist and explore it all.

Even so, based on story stats, it would seem I lost a LOT of you with my Bryce treatment, even from Part 1 to Part 2. Sorry to see that but the train keeps a'rollin' and I may as well do my best to alienate some more of you...(seriously, though, thank you to those still hanging around!)

I hope to make the timing work out but there are some important (to some people) date-related issues to be aware of here. "Nemesis" revolved around (American) Thanksgiving which, in real life, was as early as it can possibly be date-wise in 2007 (11/22) and "Nemesis" ends late on Black Friday. The events of "Crown Vic" immediately follow those of "Nemesis" beginning on Saturday morning but it is also what passes for their "Christmas" episode (ever notice how they always wreck Christmas or omit it entirely?). So the Buy More holiday party is EXTREMELY early by any accounting. Like, November early. So I'm going to ask you to ignore a few things:

First, ignore Big Mike's declaration of the party date as "this Friday" (since he says this on a Saturday, the Friday he's referring to, the one after Black Friday, 11/30, allows far too much time to transpire over the course of the episode). Ignore that by ignoring Big Mike, I actually make the party occur even earlier. Ignore the fact that either day is CRAZY early for a "holiday" party. Finally, Hanukkah can begin anywhere from early November to early December but please ignore the fact that in 2007 it began on 12/4, as I take some CHUCK-like liberties there as well for reasons that will be obvious.

Hopefully, that's all pretty innocuous and no one gets offended by manipulating dates of religious holidays. But for the more offensive elements, here are a few things you should know, or maybe just forgot...

One of the premises of this story explored in earlier chapters is that if we are to believe the backstory elements that revolve around extreme violence and assassinations - and a completely amoral spy agency - then we cannot (believably) sugar coat seductions completely. This episode is one of the reasons for that. So this installment tackles the smarminess implied by both the episode and the widely despised omitted scene (see end notes).

I've already laid out Sarah's personal rules of engagement and preferred tactics - and they have to be adjusted to the situation slightly here (and the reason she goes along with this is important) - and the presumption that there is a spectrum of standards applied by different agents and other resources as pertains to seductions that is more in line with the spy story trope than reality. Again, to be clear: not a documentary.

But even in this relatively tame scenario the biggest indignity might be the need to pretend you're happy to be there while someone touches you in very unwelcome ways and a portion of this installment attempts to look behind that facade. And that's the trained Agent. An important nuance is that an outsider might make certain unfair assumptions if they did not have all the facts...

.

* * *

.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to _A Knight's Tale_ (in notes above), the works of A. A. Milne (the title of the first chapter is NOT misspelled - if you are Winnie the Pooh - or any other "bear of very little brain"), any song by Gregory and the Hawk (revisited), Modern English or Spandau Ballet (I know, I can't believe it either), or _Scrooged_ (Bill Murray's version of Dickens' _A Christmas Carol_) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXIV - What We Are

* * *

.

073: A Thotful Spot

.

Santa Monica State Beach Park; Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 5:15 am

.

Sarah had left the observatory - after the security guard had returned and shooed her away with vague commiseration about her now-absent "friend" - and gone to an all-night diner downtown. A bar would have been an even more welcome destination but a far less productive one. As enticing as stiff drink or four sounded right now, she also didn't want to spend the next few hours trying to telepathically explain to any overzealous male patrons that their company was the exact opposite of what she needed right now.

In her current state of mind anyone suggesting that he was the solution to her problems would likely land in the hospital and that would likely land her in jail and that would force Graham to pull her from the assignment or leave her there to her own devices. Maybe that would solve her problems in an unconventional way but she was tired of taking the cowardly way out.

She bought a cup of coffee and a slice of pie that she barely touched with the secret account she shared with her friend from the DEA. It totaled roughly five dollars. The signal for a long-term engagement.

The signal was technically unnecessary based on their most recent interaction - and "Carina" would likely read more into it - assume a happier (or at least temporarily more satisfying) resolution to her and Chuck's recent complications - but it cemented her decision to stay.

Made it feel more real.

She found that she was watching other people, couples and groups of friends - envying the normalcy of their lives - rather than concentrating on what she should do next. One man in her life, her resurrected former lover, had been dealt with. She thought perhaps she had already moved on from him when she had been questioned extensively about his whereabouts or when Graham had informed her of his death or when she had watched his casket being lowered into the ground. But seeing him alive and pleading for her to rejoin him in the only life she had known for nearly a decade had been a siren song that required an effort of will to break.

Hours later Sarah sat back - hands sinking into damp sand - and closed her eyes, breathing in the salty air and surrendering herself to the slight pre-dawn chill.

Could she and Bryce ever have been more than a recurring fling? They were good partners and she liked him well enough - after the shock of their first meeting when she wasn't really in a space to be receptive to even friendly overtures from anyone - but really it wasn't much more than she had felt for any other man she had ever found attractive. She didn't know why she ultimately gave in but it really was just a matter of time.

He was ridiculously handsome and very charming but it was the natural moments that chipped away at her resolve. The ones she didn't see right away but started to after a few months. Those rare occasions when he briefly shed his super spy persona and looked at her adoringly or said something kind.

His armor went back up as quickly as it had come down but it was in those glimmers of goodness - and a reflection of his perception of her - that made her occasionally feel like someone who someone else would think worth having in their life. But neither of them could quite share enough of their real selves to be truly comfortable with one another for any period of time.

In the early days she had thought it was more than it was but her instincts were telling her to remain guarded. That something wasn't right. Maybe that suspicious nature had just been bred, taught, trained and beaten into her to the point that she had assumed no one would ever truly penetrate her own armor.

It was almost harder and more awkward once a physical aspect was added to their relationship. As though anything beyond that was just too hard and a rhythm developed between them - not unlike the tide she was watching lapping at the beach - only advancing and receding by degrees, always hovering on the cusp of something deeper but something always keeping them from taking that leap of faith. She had heard it from Bryce's own mouth; he only had one friend in the world and it wasn't her.

She took out the phone with the pictures of their Cabo trip. The one that hasn't actually had any associated phone service connected to it for over a year. She had set it to charge the day she arrived in Burbank and learned of Bryce's death. The day she had met a remarkably kind, sweet man who desperately needed her help and protection. It was an old phone and didn't hold a charge well so she had charged it again when Bryce had returned from the dead to see the photographic evidence of what she once believed happiness looked like.

She scrolled through the pictures of her and Bryce and that one beautiful day for the last time. She deleted them one by one even as she dug a trench in the wet sand with her heel. By he time the photos were deleted and she had removed the battery, the hole at the end of the trench nearest her was seeping sea water from below even before a particularly aggressive wave caused the ocean to trickle down its new temporary tributary.

She plopped the phone into that hole and filled it in before scurrying a bit farther from the encroaching tide, letting the earth itself do what she had not been able to do and destroy all evidence of the shadow of a beautiful, happy couple that never was.

.

* * *

.

_Earlier..._

L.A. Diner, Los Angeles, CA; Friday, Nov 23, 2007; 11:30 pm

.

Sitting at the diner, picking at a piece of key lime pie and nursing her third refill of coffee, she had watched the good, hard-working people of the world on their way from late shift or to overnight shifts mingling with the late-night revelers. She had been struck by the clash of worlds; those hard-working souls diligently and systematically building a better life and those ignoring responsibility and the challenges of tomorrow to squeeze every bit of life out of the moment directly in front of them.

It was likely that most of the latter were just taking a brief detour from what she had always considered the drudgery of being the former. She had always been a nomad. On the prowl for the next adventure. Her life as a spy had facilitated her nature - enabled it - not changed it or created it.

She was ashamed of some of the specific things she had done but not their end results. She was the personification of a means to an end and she was truly good at what she did. Among the best. And the truth of it was that being anything else meant turning her back on that and doing something she had never done: be still.

Stay in one place where the best she could hope for was becoming attached to people, places and things. It was the people that concerned her. People who liked her and who she wanted to like her. People like Chuck and his sister. People who would look at her with horror if they knew the the real her. She considered the lessons of her childhood; that sitting still - becoming attached - only meant you had more to lose.

As she revisited those childhood lessons, her thoughts had turned to the other man in her life, the one brought into her dangerous orbit by the actions of the first. The one who made her feel - almost all the time but even more intensely - the way she had briefly felt that led her to allow herself to become involved with Bryce. The one who had already proven himself capable of slipping past her defenses. The one with whom she naturally felt comfortable. Safe.

Normal.

The one who had stripped her of her armor from the moment she had met him without her even noticing because she could almost fool herself into thinking she didn't need it with him.

A woman's laughter caught her attention from a corner booth. A wild, carefree laugh. The perfect balance between the two worlds. An untamed version of normal. The type of laugh that Chuck was capable of drawing out of her if only she wasn't so good at nearly maintaining her poise.

Sarah turned her attention to the man with the laughing woman and watched him watch her laugh. Adoringly. They were dressed nicely but not ostentatiously, clearly still out after a date. Neither wanting the evening to end no doubt. And as the woman's laughter subsided with chuckling aftershocks she locked gazes with her partner and his hand found hers. Her expression changed completely to one of complete bliss and contentment and she stood and pulled him up to leave with her. Their evening now continuing somewhere more private.

That was what happiness looked like. And maybe they were just lustful companions for the night and saccharine notions of true love and true happiness were a fiction reserved for books and movies.

Or maybe Sarah had just witnessed the beginning of forever.

Her thoughts returned to Chuck. Someone she thought could truly make her happy. If she were capable of letting him. If she were capable of letting herself be happy. Letting herself be still. But happiness was secondary to ensuring his safety and survival. If she failed at that - or at least didn't do everything humanly possible to achieve it - there could be no happiness. That would be a scar they couldn't undo or hide at the secret European clinics that had previously put her - and another mad woman using the name Carina - and, if his suspicions were correct, Bryce - back together again.

Chuck's normalcy in contrast to her - his ability to live and thrive in a world that allowed for the notion of forever - made it impossible to concentrate when she found herself wishing she could begin again and be something as uncomplicated as a food service worker who worked in the same plaza as a delightful man who fixed her phone and who, after a bit of intense flirting, chose to jump back into the dating pool by taking a chance on her.

The very first night with him - thinking that night was all they would have - she entertained the idea of taking him to bed. She had just learned that Bryce was supposedly dead at that point but she hadn't seen him in two months and had been subjected to enhanced questioning about his dealings when he had disappeared. She didn't exactly owe Bryce any fidelity but the fact that she entertained such a thing with a man with whom she had so recently become acquainted should have told her what took her the past couple of days to sort out. She was well and truly over her former partner but she was also capable of little more than such trysts.

Recently she had considered playing a dangerous game of deception with Chuck as her partner and Graham as their adversary, advancing their cover into territory best not scrutinized too closely if she didn't want to characterize it as breaking old promises to herself. But it wasn't really a sexual relationship she craved - it was the way he made her feel. The same warmth and adoration she had seen in the man's eyes of the couple who had just left the diner.

More physical affection would be nice too but she really just wanted a way - other than the perfect combination of words which stubbornly refused to form in her mind or on her tongue - to show that she felt some version of that for him too regardless of the realities that kept her from acting on it.

And maybe, as misguided as it was, to just see what it was like to be truly adored for a moment or two.

But Bryce's reaction to learning some of the more unsavory details of her past fully justified her fears of Chuck learning the same things. Emphasized what a fool she was to think that someone like her could have even a moment like that with Chuck untainted by such lingering fears - much less the shady cover-within-a-cover she had nearly proposed and how it would wear upon his insecurities and fears - no matter how brief and fleeting. The all-too-true "thing under the undercover thing" he had insightfully exposed mere days ago, only to have her dismiss it as a figment of his imagination, disintegrating in the light of day. Made her realize what a fool she would be to entertain the idea of one day having anything more than that shadow of happiness.

She was an outsider in the real world. The scrutiny of unseen eyes and whispers of unheard voices wondered what she was doing here, why she was attempting to pretend she belonged among the real people of the world. Accused her of no longer having a place among them. She felt the shame of Bryce's gaze - the feeling of being regarded as a pitiable creature - and an overwhelming desire to lash out with the full force of her ability to destroy everyone around her. The very thing that she kept so carefully hidden. The very thing she never wanted Chuck to see.

With that disquieting notion and no idea how to move forward after recent events Sarah decided she needed a change of scenery. A quieter place was needed for contemplating such important issues but returning to her apartment felt like admitting defeat. Like returning to her false life with no resolution or plan.

She could think of only one place where thinking about and confronting hard truths seemed natural...

.

* * *

.

Santa Monica State Beach Park; Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 5:50 am

.

After she had buried the phone which once contained the pictures of her and Bryce, Sarah's thoughts returned to what he had said before leaving. Bryce had put Chuck on Graham's radar and later tried to take him off. Falsified results to make it look as though the authentic results were the falsifications.

She shared Bryce's opinion of Chuck's candidacy as any kind of Agent. Not because she thought he wasn't capable - based on what little she had seen she was pretty sure he would have been an excellent Agent - but based on what would have been lost in the process.

Maybe she was as selfish as Bryce but she couldn't bear the idea of Chuck being transformed into someone like either of them. And with his aptitude, they would have found a way to break him. They used Sarah's father against her, maybe they would have used Ellie against Chuck.

Chuck was meant for a great many things - computer prodigy and secret agent among them. Bryce had taken both futures away with his scorched earth approach. Just two months ago he made a rash decision based on misdirected sentimentality that had destroyed most of Chuck's other possible futures. And Ellie was meant to be the healer she was, a future Graham could have - would have - derailed if it served his purposes. Maybe Chuck had not been the one that Bryce had saved.

Based on the interview Professor Fleming had captured with Bryce taking Chuck's place she could also see how Bryce may have been right about Chuck being fated to a short existence as a Project Omaha lab rat. She pretended the shudder was due to a particularly chilling ocean breeze rather than the thought of a world where Chuck had been used up by the government in an entirely different way and callously disposed of by this same moment in time. An alternate universe where he had disappeared before she ever met him and she hated the tiny part of her that lamented how much easier that existence would have been if that light had been extinguished from that universe before she knew it existed. If she still scoffed at rather than mourned the the futility of thinking she could ever rejoin the real world.

There were other parts of Bryce's story that she didn't dare repeat without additional confirmation. He said he was never romantically involved with - or more specifically, had never slept with - Chuck's college girlfriend, Jill, but she wouldn't take that to Chuck on solely Bryce's word. For all she knew Chuck had caught the two of them in the act together and would directly contradict anything she foolishly regurgitated. Maybe she just didn't want to be gullible enough to be fooled by Bryce again and maybe she didn't want Chuck to think Bryce had that kind of power over her. Whatever the truth of the matter, she knew she didn't care for people pushing their way into her past and that part of Chuck's past was better left buried unless he decided to share.

Then there was this shadowy figure within Fulcrum. The one who supposedly had vast amounts of incriminating information on her and other agents, a personal interest of some kind in all things Intersect-related and, most disturbingly, knowledge of Chuck as a suitable Intersect candidate, if not knowledge that he was actually in possession of the Intersect. Agent Walker dealt in facts, not rumors, and this Hunter was another threat she didn't want to reveal to either Chuck or Casey until she had done some digging of her own to see if such a person truly existed.

If he did, friend or foe, there was someone out there besides herself, Casey, Bryce and their superiors who knew about Chuck. At least he - she assumed he was a he - did not yet know that Chuck _was_ the Intersect. But the circle was getting uncomfortably larger. And this person was imbedded within Fulcrum. Who could say whether he would one day choose to sacrifice Chuck for his own personal agenda?

Every secret Bryce had revealed came with a new set of questions. She could either broaden her own investigation or stay tightly aligned to Chuck. At least she knew he didn't have any ulterior motives. Or at least only personal ones.

That only made her think for the hundredth time of their kiss at the docks. It should be the least significant of the issues she was facing but it was the one that constantly tried to encroach upon her other thoughts. It wasn't the first time they had kissed but it was the first time that there was absolutely no excuse of a cover to hide behind. They had danced around each other for the weeks they had known one another with him only pushing a little here and there. Until he had believed she was completely unable to dodge his question due to truth serum.

That poorly worded question and carefully worded lie had been the only thing capable of pushing him away. Because otherwise he could see through her. He didn't trust what he saw but he saw her nonetheless. And what he saw seemed to be a version of her even she couldn't see. Part of her trusted that vision of her even if she didn't believe it. That somewhere deep down she was someone worth the trouble.

That vision of her - the one she imagined as the version of her she could have been - was why it was so comfortable to be around him. He only pushed a little. Tried to make her see in herself what he saw. To draw it out. And she often found herself joking and laughing with him and wanting so badly to let the version of her that he saw - that she had restrained for years - breathe the open air again.

Certainly he desired her. She wasn't completely ignorant of the effect her CIA crafted looks and an almost too-athletic body sculpted by endless training had on men. But that wasn't his ulterior motive. His true motives were hidden in one of the songs he had earmarked for her before her lie had put him off his pursuit of her.

_"I live to make you free"_

He could see her. See the inner struggle she had hidden for years. The frightened version of her that she never allowed anyone to see. Even as he dealt with the intrusions and impositions of the government on his life, he wanted to make her feel safe in showing that version of herself.

It had been a long time since she truly considered what and who she could conceivably be given what she had molded herself into over the past decade or even if she could wish all that away and start anew.

She had never properly considered the possible warmth and contentment of one day replacing her own lost family by creating one of her own with a man she loved. Never before dreamed of sitting on a beach like this watching her children play in the sand and surf with such a man beside her, laughing along with her in the warmth and light of day instead of sitting on such a beach alone in the cold and darkness of the night.

She had not considered such things before she was recruited. The child who pretended to be so worldly had not yet felt the stirring of such desires. Then she had used the shadows as her cloak, a tool to enable her many crimes. She had not considered them since her training days when it was already too late to act on such desires. And certainly not since she became an Agent and claimed the shadows as a part of her very being. Those shadows now embraced her - unwilling to relinquish their willing companion for these many years, her as much a part of the darkness as it was a part of her - extracting such dreams as payment for concealing her many sins.

Such thoughts were just dangerous and painful distractions. She didn't know if it was at all possible for her to somehow one day have a more normal existence but her own current situation precluded entertaining even the idea of such things. Especially with Chuck. His status according to the CIA and NSA made the idea doubly impossible. And starting something with him with no chance of it ever becoming the deeper relationship he deserved no longer seemed very fair to him and was therefore no longer very appealing to her.

But despite what she wanted - who she wanted to be or what he thought she was or could become - embracing that version of herself would cloud her judgment. Make her unsuited for what he most needed her for. There was a word for it in the parlance of her trade. For allowing your emotions to affect your judgment.

Compromised.

She was definitely compromised. He muddles things - affects her judgment - the very definition of being compromised. Neither of her superiors would allow that to stand and Graham might already suspect based on any deviations from his expectations of her. Just another of many reasons she needed to be Agent Walker again.

She pulled out her active cell phone and listened to his message from last night one more time.

"Hey...Sarah. Just wanted to see if maybe you wanted to come to the Buy More Christmas party next Monday? I know its kinda early this year but...anyway. I'd love you to come and if you...umm...if you can't make it just..." he heard him sigh heavily and speak more quietly, likely due to the voices in the background, "...just, be safe, OK?"

After everything, he wanted to include her in something. Something as mundane as a workplace Christmas party in November. And he was as uncertain as ever - likely thinking she had left with Bryce but even then telling her - even if she had done so, even if she had left him behind - to be safe.

It was just the sort of endearing action that made her long for a different life. And since that was impossible, such thoughts were dangerous. As much as she hated it, their situation called for a deliberate and manipulative change in tactics. He would either accept it as a shift in attitude due to any of several recent events or read her intentions properly but she couldn't waver on this. He affected her too much. And he was too important to her to allow that to impact her ability to protect him.

If she's going to stay here to keep him safe then she has to be detached and professional about it. She couldn't keep leading him on. No more straddling the fence. And since she wasn't prepared to leap over it and embrace him on the other side the remaining option of standing outside looking in was all that was left to her.

She had to be the hard ass she always had been - both to be effective and to defend herself from her own foolish desires. She could push him - not away completely, there was still their cover to consider - but to a safe distance. Hurt him to keep him safe.

Sturdier defenses were needed. Defenses even he couldn't breach.

Bryce had called her an Ice Queen upon first meeting her to test her reaction. He couldn't have known but it wasn't the first time. She didn't get involved with partners - or assets - despite what Casey had said based on the very small sample size he had personally observed. She even adopted it as a call sign for a time when several male agents assigned to work with her had been uncomfortably persistent enough times.

The horizon was just starting to glow a faintly less dark blue - starting to gradually be gobbled up by the encroaching daylight behind her but after hours of contemplation it didn't feel like the dawn of a new day. It just felt like running out of time.

She looked to her left at the silhouettes of the miniature amusement park on the pier even as she fiddled with the tiny little blue-skinned, blonde-haired figurine on her key chain. Of course, her car had not ended up in her storage unit so the Smurfette figurine had not joined her other keepsakes hidden away there.

Artifacts of a life unlived.

But still, she and Chuck had been given that one day together. Or he had given that to her.

Another beautiful day for another version of her that didn't exist. No matter how much she might want to be that person.

But the person she wanted to be was irrelevant if she didn't survive this difficult time.

And empty if he didn't.

If Chuck was going to push and push and push then she was eventually going to shut him out anyway. It was finally time for Chuck to get acquainted with Agent Walker.

It had taken all night but between a former partner, a new assignment centered on a man who saw more than he should, revelations about secrets and hidden agendas and the inescapable truth of her true nature she had sorted out what needed to be done. After sitting here for hours she could feel the coolness of her skin but the cold off-shore breeze didn't penetrate the hardened shell of this version of her. The one who could become the cold. The Ice Queen. The impervious Agent she needed to be.

She could finally see a path forward aided by the enormity of the sand and surf and the now obscured stars. She now knew why he came here to think but, without him next to her, it no longer felt like their spot.

Without him, it just felt cold.

.

* * *

.

Maison 23; Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 7:20 am

.

Sarah unshouldered her bag containing what few essentials she hadn't left in her storage unit. She threw her coat on the bed, the sprinkles of sand it shed when it landed there could be cleaned up later. She opened her laptop and let it boot up while she took an extremely quick shower and put on some comfortable sleepwear.

She logged in fully and backdoored the Buy More time and attendance system to check his schedule. The only Nerd Herd call for the morning was an early install already assigned to Jeff and Lester but Chuck's schedule was clear and Casey was scheduled to be there when the store opened also. She could leave Chuck's protection to her partner for a few hours.

One of the perks of recently becoming the sole employee of the Burbank Weinerlicious was that she dictated the schedule. Since Graham had seen to Scooter's promotion and transfer she had been keeping similar hours to Chuck's assigned schedule for proximity purposes. Just not as early so she could get in her workouts most days. The Weinerlicious corporate guidance was to start the new breakfast offerings soon but she set her alarm for 9:30 with no real intention of opening the restaurant at the new opening time of 11:00 am.

She was exhausted but she would take a few hours for herself - maybe even dream of him one last time if her subconscious mind cooperated - of the soul-restoring, protective form he has taken in her dreams - before she put an end to all that and donned her most impenetrable armor to become what she needs to be for the good of all concerned.

.

* * *

.

074: False Assumptions and Green-Eyed Monsters

.

En Route to Echo Park; Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 11:30 pm

.

Chuck Bartowski was quietly riding in the passenger seat of Sarah's Porsche, the palpable wall of awkward between them keeping him from commenting much on the events of the evening even with the combined influences of fighting the tongue-loosening effects of multiple martinis and thinking about the past week.

From trying to date Lou because Sarah had told him there was nothing between them to Sarah kissing him like it was her last act on Earth because she thought it was. Bryce returning before he could talk to her about what was really going on in her head and catching the two of them in his bedroom kissing, making out like the separated lovers they obviously were.

He had been up half the night wondering whether he would ever see her again only to have Casey call him out on it this morning with his smug, condescending grunt as he looked for her car in the parking lot. He probably _could_ catalogue and number them but their self-explanatory nature made that unnecessary.

Both of them covered for her at the impromptu briefing this morning - not knowing if she was even still in the country - after Chuck had met Casey at his place to call in the flash he had that morning identifying counterfeit bills on a yacht in Marina del Rey while babysitting Jeff and Lester. She hadn't responded to Casey's text and he was surprised when she arrived looking as beautiful as ever but as though she had slept even less than Chuck last night.

He certainly had no claim on her and not even a leg to stand on given his pursuit of another woman as recently as a few days ago. But that was before the revelation of their kiss at the docks - the revelation that he hadn't been completely misguided and there was _something_ between them - something she had pointedly avoided discussing both before and after.

Chuck had assumed based on Casey's assessment of Bryce's code phrase and the tough love approach this morning that she had decided to avoid it completely by leaving with Bryce. When she reappeared looking like she hadn't slept much he just assumed she had been up all night. That Bryce had lingered in town to say goodbye in a more intimate fashion. Chuck didn't want to think about how she might have chosen to continue "avoiding" whatever he had thought there was between him and her by doing whatever she and Bryce might have been doing until the early hours of the morning.

Of course he pried for information but she was as evasive as ever, saying only that she was still here because she had a job to do. He had tried to get her to open up a little. Joke around like they used to. Or at least get her to offer up a quasi-amused half smile when he joked but it fell flat completely.

She had murdered her alarm clock with the very definition of a nasty knife - reminding him just how dangerous she could be - giving him a bit of hope that her tardiness this morning had just been from exhaustion over the past few days. He was going to at least tell her how incredibly beautiful she looked in her clingy, low cut black dress when she coldly shut him down - reiterating that tonight was just work - and he decided to start trying to act like the spy that she apparently preferred over retail workers like himself whose only distinguishing characteristic was a rare or possibly unique brain chemistry.

She had reached out to adjust his tie - a simple gesture he had once read a little more into as though she were looking for excuses to touch him - but he just felt like a little boy in his father's suit this time and didn't allow her to do it. There was a flash of something odd in her expression but it was gone as quickly as it came and she asked again if he was ready to "work" as they headed down to drive to the event.

On the ride over he quietly contemplated something Sarah had said to him when he had been stubbornly pursuing Lou to avoid his feelings for Sarah. About relationships being difficult in this line of work - real ones and fake ones - and her comment that she never felt like their time together was work. He bitterly considered that, apparently, the rules had changed.

Again.

He knew he wasn't suave in any way and maybe he sucked down that martini a little too fast but when Lon Kirk - the billionaire philanthropist they were investigating - understandably took immediate notice of Sarah, trying to impress her with his charitable efforts, Chuck felt the inherent irony of posing as Charles Carmichael, the completely fabricated, successful version of himself. When she bought it hook, line and sinker - giving Kirk a sultry look and telling him how noble she found it - of course, Chuck made a rash bet.

Thinking he was betting a hundred dollars on black just to spite Kirk's pompous rhetoric about betting on red he ended up just making a fool of himself again, countering a comment about the suffering in the world with quote from a shitty action movie and pissing away more of the government's money than Ellie owed on her student loans. Then she actually winked at the guy right in front of him when Kirk got up to leave the table. He should have known better than to say anything because she - rightly - lambasted him curtly about his loss when he called her on it.

He had hoped he had redeemed himself somewhat by identifying Rashan Chen, the Taiwanese attaché to the Premier as their likely target but rather than the usual "good job, Chuck" she just left him there at the table while she schmoozed with Kirk for the next twenty minutes.

After razzing him about a payment plan, Casey told him to relax. That she was just doing her job. And before telling him to give up his seat at the roulette table since he was broke that "she's good at this - making men believe what they want to believe".

As Chuck stood by the stairs nursing another martini - and another - and another - courtesy of the ever present wait staff, he watched Kirk's hand find its way to Sarah's waist. Watched it drift further and further down her hip as she leaned in and whispered to him and laughed at whatever he said in response. All Chuck could think about was that it was a more intense version of every college party he had ever attended where he watched a beautiful woman drift away with another man and he petulantly wondered what exactly the limits were to this thing that Agent Walker was apparently so good at.

After a while - a period of exactly three martinis, not counting the one on the way in to be precise - she made very brief eye contact with Casey. Casey called another attendant to take over his table and disappeared behind a curtain.

Chuck didn't see Sarah disappear but a few minutes later Sarah appeared from behind that same curtain, made a beeline for Chuck, grabbed him by the hand and saying "Let's get out of here," unceremoniously dragged him up the stairs to the valet like the deadweight that he was.

.

* * *

.

New Constellation Yacht Club, Marina Del Rey, Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 10:30 pm

.

"Did you prepare him for this?" Casey asked angrily grabbing Walker by the arm as she passed through the curtain.

"Yeah," she said as she jerked her arm out of his grasp, "Cover as a couple. Watch the attendees for flashes. He did good. Rashan Chen might be the connection and I was able to lead Kirk into bragging about his yacht. It was easy enough to get him to invite me-"

Casey rolled his eyes.

"What?" Walker asked, reacting to his mannerisms.

"That. Did you prepare him for that?"

"Again, what?"

"Cozying up to Kirk. How you intended to get on his yacht." Casey watched as Walker turned a little green at the implications. "Jesus, Walker. The kid just had to watch you falling all over your boyfriend, wondering if you skipped town with him, and now..."

If Casey hadn't brought his right hand to his own face, wiping down over his eyes all the way down until he pinched his chin between his thumb and first two fingers in exasperation she would have called him on the "boyfriend" comment this time.

She was getting pretty sick of Casey trying to throw her old relationship with Bryce in her face but in her attempt to sidestep Chuck's seemingly endless questions - about her, about Bryce, about her and Bryce, about her and him, about that kiss a few days ago - and his innate ability to get her to deviate from any plan that involved distancing herself from him she hadn't realized just how unprepared Chuck might have been for seeing her like this tonight.

She hated strange men pawing at her on missions but her training prevented any of that from being readable on her face or in her mannerisms. It required disconnecting her emotions and she had become quite good at doing so over the years but it was an all or nothing thing. Even so, she had made a point of not looking Chuck's way while Kirk was introducing her to various contributors and behaving more and more possessively.

More and more intimately and inappropriately.

She now realized it was as much to prevent being pulled out of character at whatever reaction she might see from Chuck as to avoid any unfounded sense of embarrassment or betrayal at using that sort of tactic in front of someone who - in a different universe - she would want to be the only one who touched her that way.

And if she could have literally kicked herself in this dress she would have because that very thought - that one right there - was why she was convinced that distance was what she needed. Since physical distance wasn't possible, emotional distance was what was required.

So she had focused on one foot in front of the other - getting to the next phase of their mission - access to Kirk's yacht, without really considering what Chuck might be reading into it other than her being good at putting on a show. Without considering that he might have thought there was even an ounce of sincerity in her actions or that he wasn't trained to suppress his emotions like she was.

Casey was amazed at just how clueless Walker was about handling Chuck. Or even men in general, at least the ones she wasn't manipulating for a mission. She had apparently shifted gears after the truth serum thing directly causing an abrupt change in Chuck's behavior. Apparently she had shifted gears again after Bryce's resurrection, being completely cold and dismissive if their earlier briefing and the interaction at the roulette table was any indication. He wondered if she had ever actually dated anyone because it sure as hell shouldn't have looked like this.

He'd had to watch Chuck watch Walker working a mark once before but on that mission Casey had been tending bar and feeding him Shirley Temples. Casey couldn't really blame the kid but in the future, he would tend bar if at all possible to keep Chuck from wandering around and getting sloshed on free drinks while she did her thing.

Casey gathered himself and got back to business. "So what's the plan?"

"His yacht. Tomorrow. At eleven."

"Fine. I'll get a team together to back you up. I'm assuming here that you want an extraction plan since he's a VIP you can't just take out. You _say_ you don't do _that_ so I'm hoping you aren't planning on doing something unforgivable as part of whatever this Operation: Freeze Out is."

Walker tried not to react to Casey's implication that she would actually run a full-blown seduction just to spite Chuck. That was worse than his "boyfriend" needling about Bryce but she didn't want to make this about her thoughts and emotions. She was a professional - something she would never say out loud in the context of a mission like this - Casey was snarky enough without giving him a softball like that to knock out of the park - so she kept it about Chuck since Casey was so concerned about his perception of events.

"Chuck can't go on thinking there's something between us that there's not."

"And flaunting your new billionaire is going to help him see the light?"

"Look, Casey. I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for six years now. I've done ops like this before where the target was a no-kill and I've always managed to get the job done."

"Any means necessary, huh?"

"That's right," she replied defiantly, not caring anymore what it sounded like.

"Great, we're all set then. Not that you bothered running it by me but I'll back up this new approach of yours with Bartowski too - that'll make things simpler at least - and I'll make sure you're covered at the yacht. I'll watch the room for a while in case anything else interesting happens and make some calls about resources we can trust later. If you're done parading around with the billionaire, Agent Walker, go collect your _asset_ and get outta here."

Sarah stormed off after Casey reduced her relationship with Chuck down to its bare bones of asset and handler. That was, after all, the natural result of how she had decided to interact with Chuck from now on. And after tonight's spectacle and what she had to do tomorrow it probably wouldn't be an issue anymore. Agent Walker, the Ice Queen, reentered the main room and found Chuck lounging with a shoulder against a column. She grabbed him by the hand and headed toward the exit too angry and embarrassed to say much to him at all.

.

* * *

.

En Route to Echo Park; Saturday Nov 24, 2007, 11:35 pm

.

Sarah was still exhausted. She hadn't intended to be quite so curt with Chuck when he had followed her out of their briefing earlier today but - after not even two hours of restless sleep and almost missing Casey's text because she murdered her alarm clock with a muscle-memory knife throw from across the room - she surely wasn't ready to get into it with him. Especially after he had so casually mentioned something so close to the mark as the idea of her assassinating Afghani warlord not knowing such awful things were among her specialties. It had, however, seemed to stem the tide of questions so she tried the same approach when he came to her apartment.

There was a time - before she betrayed her hidden desires by kissing him like it was the end of the world - when it would have been a little fun to see Chuck at a stodgy casino-night fundraiser, his wit and humor making it an enjoyable evening among pompous fat cats trying to impress each other. And he looked good in that tuxedo - really, really good - and even more appetizing to her after that kiss. She had tamped down her physical urges but immediately regretted it when she shut down any joy he tried to bring to the mission by shrugging it off as "work".

She had reached out to adjust his tie - completely unnecessarily - it was her small gesture to him that there was more in her heart than she was free to give voice to. She did it all the time just to feel physically connected to him - to reassure him and reassure herself that he was real and so was everything good she wanted to protect in him. It was a shot to the gut when he caught her wrist lightly but firmly - much faster than she would have anticipated from him - to prevent that simple action.

The look in his eyes had been stripped of the warmth he was trying to share moments before. She had the simultaneous thoughts that she hated someone who could do that to him and that she did that to him. But she had to stick to her guns on this. Stop trying to convey things that couldn't be spoken with a touch. They couldn't be spoken because they were things that shouldn't be spoken. There was a reason she was supposed to be objective and detached.

Even the gambling of the night reinforced her decision when they sat down with Lon Kirk at the roulette table - her own metaphor for Chuck Bartowski from last night's rumination on him - and Chuck did exactly what she considered analogous to a bet on an impossible future with Charles Bartowski and put his entire bankroll on one spin of the wheel.

Not even an extremely risky single number bet - or splits and corners as even the billionaire had done - but an outside bet. A near 50/50 excluding house numbers. A coin flip. And she had a fleeting thought that maybe if he had doubled his money maybe he actually was magic (a secret suspicion she only ever shared with herself) and she should reconsider her tactics.

But he lost it all - demonstrating the foolishness of gambling at all much less with your heart - and she considered it reinforcement of the prudence of her choices.

The rest had been exactly as Casey had described and if Casey had caught on to what he called "Operation: Freeze Out" surely Chuck had as well. She tried to convince herself she was doing the right thing, no matter how much it temporarily hurt, as she pulled up to the curb outside Chuck's apartment complex.

"So, uh, what did, uh... what did you and Kirk talk about?"

Chuck had finally found his voice and he was going to find out eventually so she tried to be as matter-of-fact about it as possible.

"Uh, he invited me to his yacht tomorrow afternoon."

"Okay, what time should I be ready?"

Oh, God. He was so sweet. And she considered that he would be there for her - in whatever way he could - if she could just bring herself to explain what is and is not going to happen on that yacht. But that wasn't his job, that was for her to deal with on her own. And the more she thought about it, she didn't want to get into where the line might have to be drawn to avoid suspicion in this situation or how she had avoided such assignments by becoming a human weapon that no sane person would attempt to order to do such a thing.

"No, just me."

"Oh, just- Just you. Alone on his yacht."

And that look right there was why she couldn't try to explain it any further. It was frustrating and unfair but if he thought the worst of her maybe it was for the best. Would lessen the blow when he eventually discovered the truth of her and figured out he had been wasting his time on her.

"Chuck, its the best way to gain access to his yacht."

"And you're cool being alone with a guy like that?"

"I can handle myself!" Sarah snapped at what she considered questioning her ability to get the job done.

"Of course, you-" Chuck started but was cut off.

"Do you think that's the worst thing I've done in my life?"

Sarah mentally kicked herself at almost revealing too much with that one. And Chuck was stunned by the thoughts of the fragments of things he had seen in his flashes - the things he had prevented himself from seeing because he thought he knew a thing or two about the secret Sarah underneath the secret Agent - and, if those extrapolations were correct, the disturbing thoughts of what a female spy might have to do alone on a yacht with a male target to get the information she needed.

"N-, I-, I don't know," he sputtered, "I just don't think you should _have_ to do that kind-"

She had spent two months worried that he would see all the horrible things she had done in her career. The last thing Sarah needed at that moment was Chuck judging her for things she didn't do even if the distinction was somewhat blurry and it caused her to lose her poise momentarily.

He affected her. She was compromised.

And it really pissed her off.

"It's happening. Get over it. Just because you're jealous of the guy-"

Apparently speaking the word aloud was the trigger for Chuck to release what he had been storing up because he cut her off this time.

"Jealous? Of _which_ guy?" and before Sarah could react to the implications about Bryce, "The billionaire? What's not to be jealous of, right? Rich, successful..."

She suddenly realized that hers weren't the only insecurities brought to light over those two months even as he continued "But not really worth the trade off when you look at the kind of guy he obviously is. Sure he's a billionaire but he's a billionaire douchebag who invites someone else's girlfriend out to show her his... fancy yacht..."

And she almost chuckled at the way Chuck momentarily looked at a loss for words and glanced ever so briefly at his own crotch when he said "fancy yacht" but he continued with, "Kind of disrespectful to your boyfriend, don't you think?"

After Casey's constant ribbing about it, and Chuck now piling on by defending her as Bryce's girlfriend with regard to Kirk's invitation, it was time to nip this boyfriend bullshit in the bud and lay things out like they really are. At least she could clarify that she wasn't distancing herself because she was secretly saving herself for some rendezvous with Bryce in the far-future.

"Chuck, Bryce is not my boyfriend," she said as clearly as she dared, "And even if he was, he'd understand this kind of work."

It was all true but she knew she had said something wrong considering just how dejected and quiet Chuck suddenly became. She just couldn't figure out what until he spoke quietly.

"I meant Carmichael, actually."

_Shit. Shit. Shit. SHIT!_

Instead of clarifying anything, her vehemence seemed like a slip of the tongue that confirmed all of his secret suspicions in his mind.

"But don't worry," Chuck said in the worst way possible - in the way she had both wanted and feared - completely disinterested in what happened next, "Carmichael's booked up tomorrow anyway. Very, very busy schedule, so good luck."

It was Sarah's turn to become quiet and contemplative as he closed her car door and leaned in slightly to dismissively say without even looking at her "And good night."

Her temper got the better of her and she had inadvertently added even more fuel to the fire of Chuck's irritation with her this evening. Even though she hadn't intended to be cruel about it, she had gotten exactly what she intended, leaving nothing for her to do but drive away and steel herself for tomorrow.

.

* * *

.

075: Coffee with Casey - A Normal Life

.

Echo Park Apartments, Parking Lot; Sunday Nov 25, 9:30 am

.

"Nice car." Casey heard from behind him and smiled.

Predictable. Bartowski seeking him out to ask the questions he didn't want to ask Walker.

"Not just any car. She's a 1985 Crown Victoria. But, like a lady, she doesn't like it when I talk about her age."

"I'm not really a car guy, so I don't really... Pretty... pretty shiny though," Chuck saved his attempt at small talk when Casey's face fell a bit at his lack of interest in Casey's prized possession.

"Oh, yeah, she's shiny," Casey effused. "Hydra glide transmission, reupholstered the prisoner containment area. Even installed a state of the art GPS tracking system in the license plate. Can locate this baby anywhere in the world in less than a minute."

"It's great. Th-that's really, great, Casey."

Well, as fun as this is watching Chuck struggle with asking what he wants to ask, Casey wasn't in the habit of playing with his food and offered Chuck an avenue to get to the point.

"Could buy ten more just like her with the money you pissed away on one spin last night," Casey sneered at Chuck, referring to his ill-fated single-spin of the roulette wheel the previous evening.

"I knew you weren't going to let that go. How did I know that?" Chuck hesitated only briefly before rising to the bait. "So what, exactly, is Sarah's mission on that guy's boat today?"

And that would about do it. If Walker wanted to alienate Chuck it would probably make the eventual end of this mission easier all around. Casey had been working the secure detainment angle with General Beckman - arguing that a redundant back-up was never a bad idea - ever since he had seen the Death Valley facility and met the people who ran it. It may or may not have been an indefinite confinement but it was a much better option than the more final one that had been proposed early on. If Walker wanted out, that would also make it that much easier when the time came.

"Get close to Lon Kirk," Casey offered helpfully.

And if Walker wanted to push the kid away he could help with that too by adding, "By any means necessary."

"Wait, are... You're saying she's going to go down there and flirt with Lon Kirk alone? I mean, do you have any idea what kind of message that gives?"

The kid had probably seen every spy movie ever made. Just let his imagination roam and coupled with the way Walker was treating him he wouldn't be nearly as gaga over her as he had been.

"Hmm," Casey grunted in acknowledgement, even as he realized where Chuck had left the door open with his word choice, "and I bet Agent Walker can be quite the giver."

Casey laid the trap and walked away before Chuck followed as Casey knew he would.

"Casey, Casey, Wa, Wa, Wait. Are you saying she's going to be doing something more than flirting?"

Fucking civilians. Always the same. They wanted to know but they really didn't want to know. Casey didn't like it but he'd known Agents who did what they had to in extreme circumstances. It was the lazy few who used those tactics when other options existed for whom Casey had little respect. Even with Walker's reluctance to go the extra mile, the mission today wasn't going to be pretty but Casey already had a team ready to cause a major disruption at a moment's notice - even prevent the yacht from leaving the dock if necessary.

Whatever happened on the yacht was entirely Walker's call and none of his business. He had to respect that. And if Chuck couldn't respect that then he wouldn't be able to deal with some of the other things Casey knew for certain that Agent Walker had done in her career.

"The CIA doesn't hand out guidelines," Casey continued to tease and test, "I'm sure Walker has some really nice moves. I'm surprised you haven't sampled any of them yourself yet."

Only then did Casey wonder if he had missed something important, and suddenly very curious whether there was more going on with Walker and Bartowski than he had previously realized "Or have you?"

"How would we-? We haven't even been- Of course not. God, no." Chuck stammered.

Well, that was inconclusive. But if Walker was determined to keep him at arm's length, better to put an end to this before it becomes a problem.

"You know, sometimes you gotta take one for the team, Bartowski. Other times, you actually enjoy it."

Of course, that was true of about half of the male Agents he had worked with but almost never true of the female Agents. A few may have stopped caring but none he had met actually enjoyed these missions. Most guys - even the ones who realized the true nature of their deceptions - didn't really get it. Didn't realize the distinction between being a user and being used. He wasn't even sure he understood - not really - but he could logically appreciate the difference between the two. But Casey wondered whether he had pushed to far when Chuck rushed to her defense.

"Look, your experiences with the goats of Afghanistan notwithstanding," Casey grunted in amusement at that, "Sarah is not about to go to some boat and - and do _that_ \- with some random stranger."

"Why don't you let Walker worry about Walker, huh lover boy?"

Just then Walker arrived for Casey to transport her to the marina and completely looking the part. Hair brushed slick and straight and a shimmering gold cover up that revealed - accentuated even - a barely there black bikini. She couldn't have looked _more_ like a woman who was hoping to seduce a rich, handsome, philanthropist - which was exactly the point despite how she really felt about it - and Casey could barely restrain himself based on Chuck's flabbergasted expression from simply pointing at her and saying "Exhibit A".

The fact that she was maintaining that cold demeanor from last night, with her brow furrowed almost in disdain for Chuck's naiveté, pretty much sealed the deal when she asked him as though he were a child "Chuck, do we need to talk more about what we discussed last night?"

Chuck's attitude was predictable; equal parts disgust and "do whatever the fuck you wanna do".

"Nope. No. Nothing to talk about. No. It's all good." he rambled with forced casualness before turning when he reached his front door. "Although, come to think of it, you might wanna bring a sweater with you 'cause it can get a little _nippy_ out on the water," he offered sarcastically with a raise of his eyebrows at her chest and barely there outfit as he disappeared behind the door.

Walker watched the door close behind him. She needed to get her head in the game and Casey figured she could use as much of a wake up call about the ramifications of her decisions as Chuck had just received.

"I can't believe you did it again," he said derisively.

"Did what again?"

"This guy is the Intersect, not easily replaced. At least not yet."

This was the Bryce thing again but Sarah keyed more on the word "replaced" than his sarcasm. "What are you trying to say?"

"Till the government builds a substitute for Chuck Bartowski, try keeping it in your pants, Agent Walker, huh?"

"Just hurry up and get ready. I'll wait in the car." Casey moved to hand her the keys and she stalked off before he could reach her. "Puh-lease," she dismissed his offer of the keys as she turned to walk to the lot where she could easily get into his car if she wanted to, "Just hurry up or I'll jack it."

Casey scoffed at that before he remembered who he was dealing with and rushed inside to get dressed in record time.

.

* * *

.

En Route to Marina Del Rey; Sunday Nov 25, 10:20 am

.

It was a little less than an hour's drive to the marina and Walker had spent the first half of it in silence, curled up in his passenger seat with her feet tucked up under her and her knees, shoulder and head against the window. Casey had sipped coffee from his travel mug and left her to her thoughts as she left the mug he had brought for her untouched and cold in the center console.

Casey had never liked transporting agents to missions of this kind but he also saw it as his duty to do so. Even if he hadn't been leading a support team he would have seen her safely there and been there to pick her up whenever and wherever she said. He wasn't exactly a compassionate or empathetic person and he had no idea what to say to female agents mentally preparing themselves for missions like this but if she wanted to talk...

"Sure you're up for this?" he asked and Walker gave no indication that she had heard him although it was impossible that she had not.

Backing out wasn't really an option. She had considered refusing. There had been times in the past when she had done so, offering to find another way to get the job done. She was relatively sure what Graham would say to that, suspecting as she did that he would be testing her since she didn't leave with Bryce.

And he couldn't have picked a better target to mess with her on this subject if he had planned it. A "No Kill". It was one thing to use her charms to infiltrate a location and retrieve what she needed but introducing concerns over leaving her usual calling cards of death and destruction in such situations severely limited her options.

Guarded boats were hard to sneak onto undetected, so that left a simple lunch invitation. Remaining undetected under a seduction cover meant playing nice until you had what you needed. A "No Kill" carried special connotations. It meant playing along and playing nice all the way out the door whether that was making excuses to leave or the next day.

It was something Graham usually left to other tools in his toolbox - each with its purpose and wary of angering his more deadly pets - and that she had been fortunate to talk her way out the door relatively unscathed after achieving her objectives (or gaining the intel she needed to otherwise achieve them later) on the occasions when it had been necessary. But _not_ making the call would have been out of character for her so she went through the motions.

She made the call, challenged the approach and, as she had expected, Graham had been far less understanding than usual.

.

* * *

.

_"Is there any particular reason you are against this tactic in this specific instance, Agent Walker?", he had asked without any outward indication of his ulterior motives or unspoken suspicions._

_"Just the usual, sir. Whenever there are limited egress options-"_

_"Casey has you covered. He'll have a team to pull you out if you freak out." Graham knew her disdain for these missions and, knowing her preferences, he usually allowed for a decisive, violent escalation option. Graham didn't usually care about the nature of the resolution. On occasions when he did care or needed a more accommodating role-player, he didn't assign a valuable resource like her instead utilizing an entirely different type of resource for his preferred manner of engagement._

_But, from Walker's perspective, he also never failed to make her feel like she was something of a disappointment for failing to provide all possible options. Her reaction to that was almost entirely resentment but there was a tiny shadow of failure even though she was disgusted by Graham's definition of success._

_When Casey called for a briefing based on Chuck's flash, and she had not been present with both Bartowski or Casey clearly unaware of her whereabouts, Graham had initially thought he had Walker working in tandem with Larkin to ferret out this Fulcrum threat. When she showed up he was only mildly surprised. But if there were truly something between her and Bartowski, this type of mission was exactly what the doctor ordered to disrupt that._

_"I appreciate your misgivings but I have told Beckman, and she has passed on to Agent Casey, that you will do what is necessary to fully investigate the Intersect's suspicions. You may not like it but I have assured them that you are up for the task. And I expect a thorough effort despite your...discomfort."_

_She was glad it had not been a video conference because if she had actually seen the sardonic grin she imagined on his face she would simply had to kill him the next time they were in the same room._

.

* * *

.

Sarah just counted cars as they wove their way through Sunday traffic on the 405. She had made her choice when she stayed. Whatever it took to keep Graham from removing her from the assignment. She knew what Graham was doing and knew what it was doing to Chuck.

A seduction was a sure way to drive a wedge in any fledgling relationship and she and Chuck hadn't even progressed that far. But the fact that Graham was so transparently testing her - almost daring her to call him on it - was all the more reason to stick to her plan of distancing herself from Chuck. If he was doing this to her - someone he once regarded as valuable - there was no telling what he had in mind for Chuck. Although it both saddened and fortified her knowing Chuck cared enough about her that this was punishing him too.

"Don't have much choice. Best options and all." Walker softly answered Casey. Enough time had passed that he had almost forgotten the question.

Casey didn't want to send a mopey Agent Walker onto that yacht. He was pretty sure she would pull herself out of it but it didn't bode well for a successful mission if she couldn't get her head straight. And worse, it was dangerous.

"He'll get over it," Casey surprised himself by offering, neither of them needing clarification about who he meant.

"Maybe," she answered doubting that he would and sure that Chuck was currently dwelling on worst-case scenarios, his imagination spiraling into more and more reprehensible territory, "Why were you egging him on?"

"Just backing you up, partner. You wanna push him away, let's push him away. By the book. Asset management one-oh-one. The mushroom treatment. Keep him in the dark and feed him a lot of shit. You remember by-the-book don't you?"

Walker wasn't feeling particularly receptive to Casey's hyper-aggressive brand of tough love but she was still trying to rationalize her choices to herself.

"Maybe I gave him some mixed signals," Casey snorted and she continued more forcefully, "_but_ I'm trying to correct that."

"Remind me not to ride with you if you're driving on an icy road if that's how you 'correct'."

"I can't worry about Chuck's jealousy every time-"

"Jealousy? Is that what you think it is?"

"It's not?" Walker's surprise at the suggestion was uncharacteristically obvious.

"Of course it is. A little. But its more that he just cares about you. Doesn't want anyone to treat you like meat. But keep it up, I'm sure we can cure him of that. Maybe you should find some middle ground."

"I think that ship has sailed."

"Hmm," Casey grunted. The implication clear. This was the predictable result of playing things the way she had decided to. It was just bad timing that a mission like this coincided with it and didn't give anyone any time to adjust. It was suddenly very important to her that Casey not think the worst of her too.

"It's not true, you know. Whatever Graham told the General about me," she said quietly, "I'm not spending one second longer than I absolutely have to on that boat."

"I know." Casey replied without a trace of his usual sarcasm. He had assembled a team of highly capable resources and pulled strings with the General to ensure just that. General Beckman had been most cooperative in ensuring that Walker was well-protected. Graham wasn't fooling her either.

Casey left Walker to her thoughts and watched her transform, slowly uncurling and eventually sitting tall, proud and confident despite the reservations that undoubtedly lurked beneath the surface. She purged the rest of those thoughts from her mind, assuming her persona completely even as she let her final candid words on the matter slip from her mouth. "I hate these."

They pulled into a nearby parking lot of a shuttered restaurant, shielded from view from the street, to brief the tactical team on her approach, code words and extraction signals. Casey felt a similar need to reassure his partner - especially since he was about to introduce her to several men as though she were local "talent" rather than a trained Agent - so, as Walker gripped the handle of her door and blew out a deep breath, Casey grabbed her left hand, squeezed it gently and, receiving only a professional nod in reply as she exited the car, had simply said "Me too."

.

* * *

.

Marina Del Rey, Aboard the Floating Hope; Sunday, Nov 25, 2007, 11:35 am

.

This was never so hard before. She had always been able to disconnect herself from these types of infiltrations. Early in her career she had simply assumed that the preferred infiltration involved an expectation of willingness to actually have sex with a man who secretly disgusted her while playing along. Then it had been strongly implied that becoming someone more versatile and more deadly made such an assignment for such a person an undesirably inefficient use of resources.

She had gone to great extremes - made a deal with the devil to do equally horrible things to avoid situations where what she wanted to avoid seemed more probable than usual - to leave those sorts of assignments to the less capable "specialists", the local prostitutes whose loyalty could be bought or recruited wives or girlfriends - but that had been a less than equitable deal.

She had been led to assume certain things and it turned out that most infiltrations by actual Agents don't usually require that kind of compromise.

They usually require _this_ kind of compromise. A smarmy dilettante with his hands all over her.

VIPs were the worst. The ones with specific no-kill orders. Any other man she just concentrated on the impending turning of the tables when she would have him by the balls in a manner completely unlike what he had hoped for. But the VIPs had to be treated with kid gloves and she often turned her mind off almost completely to get past the pawing and kissing stages until she could find a way to get what she needed or find a way to relatively gracefully retreat and regroup.

And what she needed right now was to get a good look below decks. That included Kirk's state room and that meant allowing things to go pretty far. It always started innocently enough, this time it was with a little sunscreen. She could always tell what kind of effort it was going to take to retreat later by how much the man asked for permission early on and Kirk wasn't asking for any, or even hesitating to read her non-verbal cues even as she forced herself to make those cues appear slightly encouraging.

As far as Kirk was concerned, she was here and that implied willingness.

She suddenly wished she was wearing more than a tiny black bikini, a degree of modesty that had never invaded her thoughts before. She was incredibly self-conscious of the fact that Chuck had been right about the cool breeze off the water and that her body was exhibiting an arousal that he would assume was due to his touch but in reality was simply due to the cold. The sweater comment she had thought was purely a sarcastic lashing out brought on by jealousy - and no doubt was, at least to some extent - had also been practical advice to protect what was left of her modesty. Maybe she was reading too much into it but it now felt like he was trying overcome his own emotions to take care of her even on her way to seduce another man.

Kirk had already pushed his luck with the sunscreen while doing her back, letting his hands wander around her torso and teasing at the cups and center gore of her top. Had they been below or even not still at the dock she was sure he would have been completely groping her under the fabric in a heartbeat.

Chuck never pushed like that. He always let her dictate the pace and intensity of their intimate acts for public reinforcement of the cover. He had cut loose in front of that bomb - kissing her as intensely as she was kissing him once his mind had caught up to him which only emphasized his restraint in every other situation - but ordinarily he seemed to sense her hesitancy. Respected her boundaries. And she really needed to stop thinking about him right now.

It had been a training suggestion to picture someone you wanted to be with in these uncomfortable situations but the idea of that made her sick. She wouldn't taint what few wonderful memories of a kiss or a stolen touch she had with him by superimposing Chuck onto her mark. She was just glad he wasn't here to see her doing this.

Of course there was lobster for lunch and she was able to breathe for a moment and mostly get her head back in the game while they ate but when he suddenly suggested they go below while the diplomatic aid crates were loaded she almost glanced over to where she knew Casey was watching.

Going below meant alcohol and close quarters and more daring hands on her thighs and higher and dodging his attempts to slip past another tiny triangle of fabric. She certainly wished she could put him in joint lock or a chokehold until she learned all his secrets but orders had been clear. He was well connected and they needed to be cautious.

She was considering that she could always defend herself in a restrained manner more probably employed by a woman with some less effective, community center self-defense skills if things got out of hand. Or call in Casey's team with their prearranged diversion.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Anticipating the worst of it even though she was perfectly capable of preventing the worst that could happen alone on a strange man's boat. First, she would just drink enough to believably excuse herself to see what she could see on her way to and from the head. She both wished she had drank the coffee Casey had offered to move things along faster and was glad she didn't because it might have seemed suspicious.

Then she would employ any number of other tactics to stall and minimize the contact between them and maybe convince him to voluntarily give her a tour of the vessel. Failing that, there were enough crew around that she could suggest a more private room just long enough to inspect his state room before employing one of her escape plans but a tour of the boat was likely to end there.

She took a deep breath and a long sip of champagne to steel herself but suddenly all of her mental preparation for what had to be done was out the window when she heard Casey and his team boarding the ship in a manner that was supposed to have been reserved for her code word indicating she had found a smoking gun.

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcombe / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA; Sun, Nov 25, 2007, 6:00 pm

.

"Ellie or Awesome home?" Sarah asked as she barged past Chuck, looking for herself to see if they were alone before he could answer.

"No. They're at work. And 'hello' to you, too," Chuck answered testily. Sarah had been all but ignoring him ever since Bryce had left and Chuck had been trying to figure out how he could have possibly been wrong at the marina. Casey had ordered Chuck home after his flash so he had only learned they had come up empty via a texted reply from Casey less than an hour ago consisting of a single word - bupkis. He hadn't even bothered to call him a moron.

"What the hell happened today?" Hours ago, Sarah had excused herself while Kirk was ranting about his political influence, herself loudly arguing with one of Casey's support Agents to a roughly predetermined script about how she wasn't supposed to be here and her boyfriend couldn't know and they didn't have any reason to hold her.

It was almost as humiliating as the damage control call she had to make. She had front run the incident with Graham while Kirk actually did call a few high ranking government contact who - thankfully - did not have direct control over the agencies Casey and team had pretended to represent.

"I - I don't know. I don't get it," Chuck started to explain, still unsure of what had gone wrong, then saying simply, "I had a flash."

Sarah had guessed that much but Casey had confirmed it much later after Kirk had been promised official reprimands, demotions and suspensions for the fake agents from their fake superiors. Congratulations Walker, you broke the Intersect, he had said after informing her that Chuck had showed up with donuts and seen her going below just before the erroneous flash.

"Right when I went below deck with Kirk," she accused, "It's pretty convenient timing, I would say."

"What are you talking about?" Chuck was still trying to work out how his flash could have been wrong while Sarah pressed on.

"Just when you thought that I was getting intimate with Kirk, you decided to have a flash," she explained sarcastically, as though he ever just decided to have a flash. And although the idea of her getting intimate with a target - of allowing herself to be used that way - absolutely incensed him - in fact, he wasn't sure the situation or the accusation was more upsetting to him - he knew that he had seen what he had seen.

He hadn't really thought she intended to "get intimate" with Kirk to any degree until just now. Until the words came out of her mouth. Maybe he had gone to see if there was anything he could do to help - to back her up if she thought this was the only way to get the job done. And maybe he had felt a little sheepish and realized Casey had just been testing him when Casey pointed out the multiple Agents that he had deployed to back Sarah up.

And maybe it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility that something that affected him like watching her being pawed at by Kirk could conceivably affect the Intersect with which he shared a brain but he knew that he had definitely experienced a flash prompted by a visual cue in the Intersect when he had seen the markings on that crate.

"What exactly are you implying?" Chuck asked more assertively. "That I faked the flash? That I'm a flash faker?"

Maybe he didn't like what she was doing on that yacht and maybe he hoped he could do something to minimize her participation in such a thing but he wouldn't mess around with a flash. His reliability was the only thing keeping him alive and out of a bunker. No matter how much she had preoccupied his thoughts lately or how confusing he found things between them right now not everything was about Sarah Walker.

"You know, I think we need to discuss the fact that you let your emotions get in the way today," Sarah continued as though her point had somehow been proven.

"My emotions?" Chuck considered the vagaries of the woman before him. Constantly in motion, constantly changing. He had tried to show her that she was safe with him. That she could trust him. That her suspicion of everyone and everything was unnecessary here. He had suspected from the kiss that she was hiding from her own emotions and Bryce's visit had seemed to throw her into a tailspin but taking it out on him was just unfair.

"Things have been a little off since the incident, Chuck," Sarah might have picked up on the shift in Chuck's tone or his thinking or just run out of steam when she started to soften her position but it was too late.

"Really? And what incident are you referring to, Agent Walker, huh?"

She knew she had pushed him too far and she hated when he called her Agent Walker. It was such an accusation. A commentary on her dual - or even multifarious - nature. A spiraling circle that made "Sarah" sound ever more appealing but, in stark contrast, gave "Agent Walker" much more bite than he probably intended.

"Could it be the incident where you planted a kiss on me right before a bomb was supposed to go off, ending our lives?" Chuck continued, "That same kiss right before your boyfriend, Bryce, came back from the dead, that kiss?"

God, with the boyfriend thing again, but Chuck was relentless in stripping away the vague nature of her word choice, replacing "incident" with "kiss" over and over again. "Stop saying kiss. It happened. Okay? What's done is done. Can we just not talk about it, please?"

"Okay, fine. Absolutely, of course." That should have sounded like a victory but he hadn't backed off at all, "Just answer me one little thing..."

"Chuck..." Sarah tried to defuse things. She had come out swinging but he had absorbed her initial barrage and now had her on the ropes and they both knew it.

"...Did you kiss me that night because you thought we were going to die, and mine were the most convenient lips around, or was it actually about me?"

She had wanted to establish some distance. She hadn't meant to go down this path. Hell, she brought up the incident - the kiss - that had suddenly become a weapon in this battle of words. She had just attempted to remove it from the battlefield but now Chuck had claimed it as his weapon because it revealed the one thing he really wanted from her. The truth.

She had wanted to push him away. She hadn't expected him to push back - not like this - and now all she could think of was how to escape.

"What happened was a mistake," she lashed out deliberately hurtfully, hating it even as she said it, "One I won't make again."

Sarah stormed out, slamming the door behind her. She stomped purposefully toward the archway separating the courtyard of the apartment complex from the rest of the world. As soon as she stepped through the arch, she slid to the side into the shadows to one side where the illumination of the security lighting did not reach.

She leaned with her back against the cool stucco and closed her eyes hard against the emotion trying to escape through them before she tilted her head back and looked up at the starless sky.

It had been a mistake to kiss him but not for the reasons he now thought.

He had asked a question about whether "the thing under the undercover thing" was ever going anywhere and she hadn't wanted to get his hopes up. Or hers. She used the narrow truth that she didn't believe it was possible - that THEY were possible - to push him away. To put an end to their dangerous dance around each other. The kiss had torn away the facade and forced her to hurt him again.

That was the mistake. Revealing too much. Promising too much. Leaving herself exposed when she wasn't prepared to do anything about it. But not the actual act of kissing him when she thought they were about to die. That she would choose again.

Because it had no repercussions. Repercussions she would have to face at tomorrow's planned dressing down of her and Casey by their superiors. She couldn't blame it on Chuck. He had only the best intentions whether the flash was faulty or not. This was on her.

This was why she couldn't let her emotions rule. Why she needed to be the Ice Queen.

If only she could.

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Echo Park, CA; Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 7:00 am

.

"Is there something that might have caused Chuck to think those plates were on Kirk's boat? Anything that might have caused his flash?" Walker had already felt foolish enough standing in front of their superiors in her Weiner Girl uniform General Beckman's tone had been unable to conceal her exasperation with their failure yesterday after spending part of last evening and most of this morning smoothing things over with other agencies and distancing the CIA to prevent additional avenues of questioning.

"Not that we're aware of," Walker was surprised Casey hadn't answered. She resisted the urge to look at her partner but had noticed he kept glancing at her, letting her take the lead, so she answered on both their behalf herself.

"I don't want the two of you anywhere near Kirk from now on," Beckman ordered.

"Both of us?" Walker challenged, "But he doesn't suspect me."

"We don't know that, and we can't risk it," Graham leaned in and practically snarled, "So until further notice, consider yourselves benched."

It was hard to tell from a video link but she was sure that most of the heat from Graham had been directed at her. He and Beckman presented a unified front but she wondered if he had been defending the ability of one of his supposed best Agents to execute a simple infiltration and intel gathering mission. She wondered just how much he had inferred from her failure and Chuck's interruption as he abruptly disconnected the conference.

"Well, that was a bang-up job, Walker," Casey turned to her, their own united front dissolving with no more audience, "All right, I'm going to give you one last chance to come clean. Did you or did you not compromise yourself with the Intersect?"

Walker considered how to answer that question and Casey might have been as surprised as she was when - after an uncomfortably long time trying to find the words which spoke volumes in and of itself - Sarah answered for her.

"Do you ever just want to have a normal life?" she finally asked after a few fits and starts. And then with a questioning raise of her shoulders and unusually vulnerable quirk of her expression, "Have a family?" she paused again before Sarah's voice surprised her again, "Children?"

Casey hadn't expected that. Any of that. But decided to remind Walker of the reasons they were chosen - or allowed - to conduct this particular mission. Especially given the improbability of this whole affair ending in any way other than coldly and cleanly. "The choice we made to protect something bigger than ourselves is the right choice, hard as that is for you to remember sometimes," he said sternly.

Of course, Casey was right. There was still a good reason for what they did. Most of the time. And he had chosen this path. He couldn't know that she hadn't. That she had done it to save someone specific and had found a calling no one could have predicted of a juvenile con artist. He had at least done it for the right reasons. She had used those reasons to try to justify what she had become after the fact. But did it really matter now who once had the purer intentions?

They were both just a couple of assassins now.

This was too hard. She should have chosen to leave. Not necessarily with Bryce but with the same purpose. She could have toyed with their enemies and kept Chuck safe that way rather than try to maintain a delicate balance between his emotions and hers to stay close to him.

She would have been more effective doing what she was good at than staying here doing what she was inept at.

"I'll talk to Chuck," Walker offered, wresting control back from Sarah, "And if I can't fix this, then I'm going to ask for a reassignment."

Casey didn't want that. He wanted her to figure this shit out, not run away from it. She was a grown woman, she should be able to handle her lady feelings and play Bartowski's. Not like she did in situations like Kirk's yacht but well enough to keep him off balance but stable at the same time. Walker raised a mug adorned with an NRA logo to her lips as she drained the remainder of the coffee that Casey had offered while they had waited to be dressed down by their superiors before moving to leave.

On her way out the door, Casey heard her mutter something that sounded like "Must be nice to have choices."

It prompted Casey to consider something he hadn't given much thought until their confrontation after first contact with Lon Kirk two days ago had revealed a detail about Walker that resulted in what he considered impossible but irrefutable mathematical deductions.

Walker was a good partner. And he had learned enough about her in their first few days together to deduce that she was a shadowy legend within the spy community. Maybe even multiple legends. Given this unorthodox assignment all he had really cared about at first was that she was competent. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that she was far more than that.

Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. It conjured up many images and he had to confess that most didn't look a thing like Walker. In fact, and maybe this was his own bias, his first inclination had not been to even consider Graham's Enforcer might be female. Any thoughts in that vein would probably lean toward a femme fatale anyway. A seductress who killed by stealth and trickery.

Not only had Walker shown a great deal of outward disdain for such things but she had also tended to confront problems head on. At least tactical, mission-related problems. Matters pertaining to Bartowski's protection. The man himself was a different matter altogether.

After the Zarnow incident Casey had stopped probing Walker's past. Hadn't dug any deeper. He observed enough to know she was everything he could hope for in a partner. He hadn't given any thought to her age.

_"I've been doing this for six years now,"_ she had said. Casey doubted that Walker was older than Bartowski but if she was it couldn't have been by much. Bartowski had just turned twenty-six at the beginning of this mission. If Walker had been in the field for six years, she finished her training around the age of twenty. Maybe younger. He would have guessed that Graham got her right out of high school but her proficiency suggested a training period that would mean she had been even younger than that.

The legend of the Enforcer wasn't something that had gradually intensified. She didn't learn on the job. She was highly trained the moment she started. It had taken Casey three years of training - interspersed with missions - to achieve his level of fighting proficiency and even though he was a hundred pounds heavier and at least twice as physically strong he wasn't sure he could take Walker in a real fight.

In a ring with rules sure, he could probably overpower her eventually. Or maybe she was just as likely to outlast him. The mongoose and the cobra. But he didn't think either of them had much use for rules in a real fight and he had already nearly lost to her once.

That meant years of training and that would mean Walker's indoctrination into the spy world occurred when she was a teenager. Not late teens either. Not like his choice to attend the Academy. And military service was a very different "choice" than the life they both currently led. He would never dare show any pity to her but his heart went out to a young girl he had never had the pleasure of meeting and no one ever would.

No wonder she was such shit at dealing with Bartowski. No wonder she fell for the charms of a Bryce Larkin. For all he knew, she was engaging in full on combat training when she was barely out of a training bra.

Casey didn't need any reasons to hate Director Graham more than he already did but this was more than he had bargained for. John Casey didn't need the whole story to know one thing for certain about Langston Graham.

He never gave her a choice.

.

* * *

.

076: Cover Maintenance - Head Over Heels when Toe to Toe

.

Buy More Parking Lot, Burbank, CA; Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 9:30 pm

.

Sarah sat outside in the Buy More parking lot watching Jeff Barnes lock the front doors. She wasn't sure if she should be here. Chuck had invited her but he wasn't sure she was even still in the country at the time. It might have just been a flimsy excuse to call and find out where she was and they hadn't discussed it since.

She had been considering whether she made the right choices that night on the beach and decided she both had and had not.

Staying? Yes. She had second-guessed herself, something she was not in the habit of doing, and considered whether she should request a reassignment to avoid the difficulties of dealing with Chuck. But when he had run to her, desperate for her help, she had realized that it wasn't Chuck's emotions that were impacting performance.

He was able to flash just fine even watching her get uncomfortably close with a man they were investigating. He clearly hated it. And if Casey was right it was mostly indignation on her behalf although she would be embarrassed to admit that it made her smile to think he was a little jealous. She just couldn't reassure him in the usual verbal or physical ways that he need not be. But he had managed to keep his emotions and his performance separate. She was the one who had failed to do the same.

The wrong decision had been choosing to stifle everything she felt for him. To try to push him away with her Ice Queen persona. It put too much strain on her and caused her to react in ways she wouldn't normally.

When Chuck had burst into the Weinerlicious she tried to cut him off because she was sure she knew that he was talking about their kiss again when he said he needed to talk to her. Then, as he pressed on, so certain about where the missing counterfeiting plates had been hidden, she realized that unlike her and Casey, he was still on the mission. Still pressing forward because he wanted to do what was right.

When he also shared his concern that Morgan might be in trouble, she only gave a passing thought to the trouble she would be in if she listened to him and he was wrong. He wouldn't mess around with Morgan's safety like that.

Then she realized that was exactly what he had done with her. He didn't contrive a reason to get her off that boat but rather found one. He wasn't a fighter but he would fight for Morgan. Or Ellie.

Or her.

She should have trusted him rather than trying to freeze him out. He was a grown man and each of their frustrated outbursts aside he wasn't going to suddenly become a petulant child just because he didn't get his way. If anyone had done that it was her, the strain of being less than kind to someone so kind had affected her and she had been a fool to try. To think that, whatever she was now, she was still capable of being that Ice Queen she had once been.

All of that was what she was thinking as she sped to the marina with Chuck in the passenger seat. She had a vague recollection of leaping over the counter and saying "Let's go". The exact moment of decision was hard to nail down because there wasn't one. She trusted him. As she had asked him to trust her. And she should have trusted him all along.

The fact that Kirk had played a shell game with the crates didn't change what Chuck had seen and, although she made the drive in likely record time, she thought they may have been too late when Chuck confirmed his other suspicion that Morgan was in danger by spotting a transponder for a guided missile on the hull of Rashan's boat.

The rest was a blur but what stood out was that Casey had apparently come to some of the same realizations shortly after Chuck unsuccessfully tried to convince him to act because he was only seconds behind them in arriving.

That Chuck had played his part in a simplified con game involving her throwing herself at Lon Kirk; not particularly well but not due to any misplaced jealousy or disdain for her plan. He just wasn't equipped for it.

And that Chuck had stopped a missile in flight by cracking the control device for a guided missile in seconds. Bryce had been right about Chuck's hacking skills. And Casey had grumbled about it for hours afterward since it left him without a car when Chuck was forced to use it's GPS transponder to dispose of the missile.

When they had put aside all their squabbling, the three of them had acted as the team they were meant to be.

Her musings on the topic were interrupted by a text from the team member who had been not-so-subtly challenging her to see all of this all along.

"Casey: So you coming in or what?"

Sarah looked toward the doors and saw John Casey, Buy More Green Shirt standing some distance from the doors, arms crossed over his chest and glancing briefly toward the parking lot outside. He uncrossed his arms as his own phone chirped.

"Walker: Yes. See you in there."

He typed out another message extending the courtesy of letting her in, "Casey: Want me to unlock the doors for you?"

If Casey was going to continue acting somewhat human toward her he was going to have to learn to do it without forgetting who he was dealing with professionally so she typed out another message.

"Walker: You're funny."

She didn't expect a response to that and didn't receive one. One of Chuck's emoticons would have been appropriate but she didn't know of one that represented a smug, know-it-all, amused, relieved and appreciative grunt. She was sure she saw the corner of Casey's mouth quirk upward as he left his self-assigned sentry post by the door and moved deeper into the store.

Maybe Casey wasn't the only one who needed to accept her divergent personas.

Maybe she could find some semblance of balance that didn't get them all killed.

Maybe she had been wrong in what she said to Chuck after their "date" at the pier.

Maybe it was possible for her to be an Agent and a woman.

.

* * *

.

Buy More Holiday Party; Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 9:40 pm

.

Sarah had eschewed the front doors and broke in through the loading dock. As she had the night before her mission here truly began when she stole Chuck's ruined hard drive. As she had a few days ago when she snuck in with her old partner as they returned to support her new partners. Defeating a retail store's security was child's play. Thinking of a surly black ops assassin and a kind-hearted civilian as partners had been harder.

But the lanky young man dancing erratically by himself as she approached from behind was definitely her partner. She slid in front of him into his field of view as silently as she had slid through the bowels of the store and smiled at his startled reaction.

"Hi," he blurted, following it up with a smiling "I'm glad you-, I'm glad you came."

He jumped as something occurred to him saying "I got you something," and he moved toward the nearby Christmas tree, returning with a familiar item wrapped in a simple bow. "It's a new alarm clock. Merry Christmas."

"You shouldn't have," she smiled at his ability to partially re-write their tense moment in her apartment. To recapture his attempt at levity and this time she decided to accept it. She still thought of it as a failed attempt to resist his charm and humor but now she was far less irritated - perhaps even relieved - by her failure. The Ice Queen would have been impervious to his charm. But even though she wasn't sure who she wanted to be, she knew who she didn't want to be.

"Ah, come on," he casually met her half-way in capitulation before further deflecting the seriousness of their situation with humor, "They're on sale in Home Electronics. Which reminds me," he continued smiling at her, "I should probably scan that thing before you leave the store with it."

Sarah knew how much money Chuck didn't make at the Buy More and she knew that she would leave with it - and try not to kill it on any difficult mornings to come - and that she wasn't going to let him scan it before she did.

"Look," he continued, "it's also kind of a kind of a thank you for believing me when you had good reason not to."

Sarah smiled at that. Believing me when you had a good reason not to. It's pretty much the fundamental truth of their relationship. But she thought she could take the opportunity to conduct some damage control. To soften her stance from the past few days and try to convey what she's trying to do.

"Well, it's my job, you know," she felt that he deserved at least a clue - a window into her mind which he usually saw so clearly - to understand why it was so hard for her to do anything other than what she had been trained to do. Why anything else was so foreign, unfamiliar and frightening to her. Especially if she was going to keep asking him to believe her when he has good reason not to.

"It's what I do," and she folded into herself when she realized the fundamental truth about her, "It's the one thing I'm good at."

"Really?" Chuck feigned and instantly seemed to both understand and accept but then refuse to let her limit her view of herself to her job and use her own words as a means to try to convey to her again how amazing he thought she was, "...'Cause I'm pretty sure you're good at a lot of things."

There is was. The version of her that she once could have been and now found she still wanted to be. The version of her that, currently, only existed reflected in his eyes. Still, it made her feel a warmth and comfort - chasing away the chill of the Ice Queen - making her feel almost whole - and it emboldened her to soften her stance a bit more. To share a bit more.

"Well, as you can see from everything that happened with Bryce, I'm not so good at relationships..."

She trailed off there, hoping he would see the unspoken. Relationships. Plural. This one and that one. He had no way of knowing that they were the only two, or at least the only two of any consequence. The important thing was for him to recognize that she was not out of his league in any way. He was everything she wanted and made her want to be the best version of herself.

And she could tell that he could see into her but still didn't see what she saw in himself. That was confirmed by his response.

"I guess that makes two of us," he said, considering his own ineptitude with romantic relationships before deflecting in his usual self-deprecating way with a humorless laugh, "And then that makes me good at pretty much nothing, I suppose."

Sarah decided she would have no more of that. Inescapably, he was a repository for the secrets of a nation, but it was what he _did_ with those secrets - his relentless pursuit of what was right and just - that showed, as much as she hated to admit it, that Bryce was right about him being the only conceivable choice to be trusted with this burden. They were here to protect him but he was an important part of the team too.

Tomorrow she would probably have to remind him to stay out of the fray again but for now, it was time he heard the truth about himself.

"Chuck, you're good at your job, too. And not just here, fixing computers. You know, the one where you risk your life to save others; the one that you didn't ask for...but were supposed to have."

He couldn't know the extent of the truth of that last part if Bryce were to be believed. If she believed in things like destiny, she would have said he was destined for it. And it didn't take a Chinese mystic for her to see it this time. _"A great man...Greater than you yet know."_ The version of _him_ that, currently, existed only in _her_ eyes but the version of him that he _would_ become. The reason she had stayed.

The reason she would stay.

Chuck smiled at her though it was clear he didn't fully believe the words. "Friends?" he offered, with his hand extended. Friends, of course. Partners. Maybe one day more but friends would be nice for now.

"Yeah," she replied, taking his hand in hers, "Friends."

A bleary-eyed Jeff Barnes - clearly under the influence of egg nog that contained far more rum than eggnog ever should - chose just that moment to approach them and hold a sprig of poison over Chuck's head. "Mistletoe," he spat out the word, "You'll thank me later, dude."

"It's a rule, Sarah," Chuck faux pleaded, "A tradition."

"Is it a rule or a tradition?" she teased with a smile.

"It might be a law," he tried.

"Definitely a law," Jeff offered before a hiccup that ended with a small burp Chuck was reasonably sure he could have ignited.

"Thanks, Jeff," he fanned the air between them with his hand before turning back to Sarah with that smile of his that made her feel warm and happy, "And it's a federal law, not just a state thing. You wouldn't want to break the law, would you Sarah?"

"You're such a dork."

Before he could protest she closed the distance between them and a peck on the lips lingered for a second longer than she intended, Chuck softly closing his lips around her upper lip as she did the same to his lower lip. They just fit.

She moved her hand to his chest to gently push him away as she had been forced to when saying goodbye to Bryce a few days ago but, at the same time, he broke the kiss of his own accord and moved slightly away from her, and her hand landed on his chest. Neither of them pushing against the other. Her not pushing him away and him not seeking anything more.

"Lame," Jeff said as he stumbled over to Skip's position at the DJ table.

"Friends who kiss, apparently," Chuck observed, "Sorry, he's relentless."

"Don't be. We, umm..." she looked down to find her hand still resting on his chest and she retracted it slowly, closing her fingers into a loose fist as she withdrew her hand, "...we're going to have to find a way to make...that...work."

"Don't worry, Sarah," and he surprised her with his quickness again as he caught her hand as it fell to her side, holding it lightly and gazing into her eyes, "I'll follow your lead."

"OK," was all she could muster in response.

"Just be glad he apparently retired the mistletoe belt buckle," Chuck smiled as wickedly as he was capable in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"Eww."

"I know, right?"

There was a decidedly 80's slant to the music being played and Modern English's contribution to the era - a fitting song written about making love while nuclear bombs fall - was playing when Chuck dared to pull her slightly closer, asking "You wanna dance?"

His heart leapt at her simple response of, "Sure."

After she laughed at a few of his goofy dance moves, breaking out a few of her own that were not suitable for trying to maintain the facade of being thought of as a good dancer but which - to her delight - made Chuck laugh as well, she asked a question as they continued to dance.

"So, what's up with Christmas in November?"

"Oh, right. Well, besides the typical retail Christmas creep which makes all things red and green appear way earlier than they should, Lester is Jewish and objects to calling it a 'Christmas Party'. Big Mike has tried not to put Christmas stuff out way ahead of the actual holiday for years, so Lester suggested we just get the 'Holiday Party' out of the way once the post-Thanksgiving decorations go up."

"Weaselley little Lester?" Sarah smiled, "Did he suggest the date?"

"Yeah...why?"

"He played you. Hanukkah begins tonight. It's a 'Hanukkah Party'."

"That little creep," Chuck smiled at the thought of the self-described Hinjew who may or may not have been hustling his co-workers spinning a dreidel in a game that looked more like craps played in an alley somewhere in an old gangster movie, "You never did say what moves he put on you."

Chuck's question seemed to be driven more by curiosity than jealousy. "A whole lot of what not to do. I called his bluff. I read people pretty well, you know?"

"Yeah, I do. I never meant to imply I didn't trust your judgment or ability, Sarah. I just...I just didn't like it."

Sarah knew he was no longer talking about Lester's ill-fated advances. "I get it, Chuck. And, for the record? Me neither."

After a few seconds there was the sound of a record screeching. A slower song began and Chuck rolled his eyes slightly as he recognized Spandau Ballet's _True_ and saw Jeff giving him a thumbs up while Skip shrugged apologetically next to him.

"He's trying to be helpful," Chuck offered as an apology and then - true to his word - followed Sarah's lead as her arms snaked loosely around his neck and his moved to rest lightly on her hips.

"This a good one?" she asked earnestly and Chuck caught on to her unspoken plea.

_Tell me. Teach me. Just be us. Just...be._

_Please._

"It's all right," he began, "80's anthem. Sixteen Candles? 80's movie?" he asked watching her face for a response.

Sarah just subtly shook her head.

"No?!" he exclaimed, allowing his infectious enthusiasm to take over and her smile and even a small laugh overtook her without waiting for her permission, "It's a classic! Ellie loves it but I like some of his other ones better. We could, well, I could get a copy for you."

He would never know how much courage she had to muster to say the next words.

"Or we could watch it together?"

"Really?"

"Chuck, I've..." she breathed deeply before continuing, "I've been doing a lot of thinking. About everything but mostly about me. And I know that it sounds really selfish but there are things I'm not ready to talk about out loud. Even though I know they should probably be said. I don't know what I'm doing here, so...can you let me do that? Figure myself out?"

Chuck considered her for a moment, as she nervously worked her lower lip between her teeth. This was the Sarah he knew that he suspected few others did. The one that was brave even when she was uncertain. And both Agent Walker and Sarah were uncertain how to proceed.

This was clearly a big step for her. She hadn't run from herself this time. It was nowhere near where he thought he might be with a normal girl. But she wasn't normal, she was extraordinary. And there was nothing to be gained by pushing and pushing for something she wasn't ready to consider.

He thought he knew her heart but there were more than just professional and circumstantial reasons preventing her from embracing those feelings. She had certainly built walls within walls to protect herself. The precious, pure version of her that she had somehow protected from the horrors she must have seen and done in the course of doing what she does. But it wasn't his job to knock those walls down.

It was his job to be here for her when she was ready to step out from behind them.

"And maybe not assume I know what you're thinking and make bad decisions based on the wrong guess?" he offered, knowing his own tendencies to want to know how things work, and she shyly nodded.

"This is going to be very hard for me you know? I do like to talk things to death."

Sarah had pulled him closer and laughed into his shoulder at that.

"Hey, not cool!" he protested but almost stopped sway-dancing entirely at the smile on her face when she looked up at him.

"So," he continued, breaking the intense moment before it became too uncomfortable for her, "John Hughes marathon - he's the guy that did a bunch of those classic 80's movies - we'll just hang out and...well, no 'and'. No pressure. Ellie usually avoids my marathons but she'd probably be on board for that one. And Sarah, if you ever do need to say any of those things out loud, someone very smart and very beautiful recently told me that I listen almost as good as I talk."

"I don't think you do anything as good as you talk," she teased.

It was true. And she loved the way he slipped little subtle insights about her - or more accurately, the way her felt about her - into even the most trivial conversation. Even when she was trying to tell him why all this was so hard for her, he made her feel like far less of a disaster than she perceived herself to be. Movie nights might be a little risky keeping the cover professional but she trusted that he had seen the folly of trying to push her too far too fast. Hopefully they wouldn't always need Ellie as a chaperone and hopefully she would be able to try a little bit of normalcy on for size so she accepted his offer. "But that sounds really nice. Thank you."

She could see him understand her thanks for what it was. Not just about two - friends? - partners? - watching movies together but also thanking him for letting her know he was going to try not to push. She was sure it would slip through now and then but - especially in moments of normalcy like this - navigating the real world she no longer understood - maybe she could follow his lead too.

Sarah allowed their slow-dance posture to transform, her arms drifted around his torso and she felt him hug her close reassuringly for a few moments before relaxing his loose embrace. She allowed herself to melt into him for a few moments as they clumsily wobbled in a very rudimentary box step.

It was nothing fancy but it worked for them in this moment and she recalled the first time she had seen him just feet from this spot. When she had sized him up physically and considered his frame compared to hers. What they might look like dancing together.

She had been right the day she met him - they fit together perfectly.

.

* * *

.

Buy More Holiday Party; Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 10:05 pm

.

Casey had been watching Bartowski and Walker dance together from across the room. The music had been changed to faster tunes after protests from the largely male crowd. They were now dancing as goofily as he had ever seen and something had obviously changed between them. Walker looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.

He intended to have another cup of the punch Barnes hadn't tampered with before leaving the festivities and making some calls about acquiring a replacement vehicle when his phone rang and he answered with a curt, "Casey."

"Major," came the greeting in reply from General Beckman, "I am calling to inform you that the beta version of the Intersect computer was successful. The new intersect should be up running soon. Once the new computer is on line, once it can do what he can do, it will be time to take care of Bartowski."

"Roger that," Casey answered as he watched Bartowski nearly drop Walker after a botched attempt at a swing dance dip. She had burst out laughing and was now demonstrating how to execute the move properly with a beaming smile on her face.

It reminded him of another time he had watched them on the dance floor - standing to the side as she easily decimated his hand-picked grab team - and how he had assumed that the way she looked at Bartowski then was a purely professional facade as she worked a mark. He started to suspect that had never been the case as tonight there was no longer any possible purpose to such deceptions. This was her true face.

Casey returned his attention to the General's phone call and asked a question which had become increasingly important to him since their trip to Stanford and his subsequent conversation with Chuck. "Manner of disposition?"

"Undecided. I take your recommendations seriously, Major but the overall risk assessment is the crucial element here. Perhaps the situation will change if we can put a dent in Fulcrum's attempts to acquire the Intersect."

The General paused before continuing, genuine concern creeping into her voice, "I hope you have not grown too fond of the subject. I would hate for you to be compromised."

She had no reason to doubt him, even if he had doubts. John Casey had always done what needed to be done.

"I understand my orders, General." Casey watched some more. Watched Bartowski flawlessly execute the dip she had just taught him. Watched her just playfully pat his cheek when Casey had been sure they were going to kiss. Watched that simple act light up Bartowski like the Christmas tree behind them. Watched as Walker loosely draped her arm around Bartowski's and walked with him to the refreshment table with a glowing smile that made the difference between her at a crappy company Christmas party and her on a billionaire's yacht painfully obvious.

"Oh, and John?"

Casey responded with a clipped "Yeah?" hoping some force intervened and resulted in a more positive outcome for Bartowski than the limited options currently under consideration.

General Beckman offered a simple "Happy Holidays" and Casey simply disconnected the call, not responding in kind.

Walker and Bartowski were talking with Grimes and Wu, the two men talking animatedly and Anna appearing to be offering her congratulations that Walker and Bartowski had worked things out. Casey decided to leave then and there when he saw the way Walker looked at Bartowski when the young man wasn't looking.

It was either the best act ever solely for the benefit of a bunch of Buy Morons or the beginnings of something that would make the most dangerous woman he'd ever known even more dangerous.

If nothing changed their superiors intentions toward the ultimate fate of Charles Bartowski, God help them all.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2 - Regarding the deleted scene: Sable fish is considered a delicacy in many countries. Maybe it really could get you out of working a year's worth of weekends.

Regarding the OTHER deleted scene (and the episode): Upon refreshing my memory of this episode for writing purposes, I found that was guilty of two mistakes in my recollection of events.

First, General Beckman never said the words "any means necessary". I'm not sure why I thought she did but I was surprised that it wasn't there. Casey does say it in the deleted scene which leads us to...

...Second, in that widely despised deleted scene, Casey doesn't actually say that Sarah will likely be having sex with anyone. He does say the loaded words "any means necessary" and some other provocative things to get a rise out of Chuck - fishing for information - but Chuck is the one who makes that leap.

Ultimately, I surprised myself by keeping the deleted scene almost entirely untouched. Honestly, especially in the context of this story, it wasn't as bad as I remembered. It feeds an important discussion later (beyond providing the necessary information about the GPS in Casey's Crown Vic) so I tweaked it, added some context before and after and changed two unnecessarily specific words.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why they took it out. It's not a suitable topic for 8 pm, the tone is all wrong for the show (especially at that stage) and its not the kind of thing you introduce unless you're prepared to face the tougher parts of the issue. But on the other hand, it must have been too late / deemed not a big enough deal to change the fact that the very next episode revolves around a long term seduction.

Even though they didn't explicitly confirm certain things in "Undercover Lover" either and tried to soften it with a few throw away lines, they created strong implications. But we'll get to that one when we get to it. Let's just say that the 2007 writer's strike (which cut many show's seasons short and stymied development of alternative programming) may have saved the show if they had many more of these types of episodes teed up and it gave them time to reconsider.

I'm still choosing how to approach the next episode from two different possibilities but we're in the Season One home stretch now so stay tuned!


	25. XXV: Creatures of the Underworld (1:3)

...wherein promises are kept, holidays are observed, speculation runs rampant, resolve is tested and another lost lover returns from the dead...

Canon Reference: Interludes from lost time between Episodes 111 and 112 and early parts of Episode 112 ("Undercover Lover")

Contents: Two chapters but could effectively be five (if Ch 78 had been split into its four component parts - they are all about "Observances" of one kind or another), over 11K words.

A/N: As usual, the length of the overall treatment got away from me so I split it into two parts while I continue to work on the back half. So this is the first part of events around and within Undercover Lover but this first part will seem like a bit of filler - and to a large degree it is - in order to get through some of the dead space between S1 and S2 and/or Episode 111 and 112.

You see, the calendar / timeline dates of most S1 episodes' events roughly coincide with their air dates. S1 was originally set at thirteen episodes but when the 2007 writer's strike hit they held on to the last two episodes hoping against hope for a full-season extension. But as the writer's strike dragged on, they aired Undercover Lover and Marlin at 8 and 10 o'clock as a sort of double feature in January 2008. When the strike ended, they opted to re-launch a full S2 rather than produce any new S1 episodes for the spring.

The result was that there are eight months between the air dates of UL/Marlin and First Date and, like S1, S2 has some episodes that anchor on holiday's near their air date so you can't arbitrarily move them too much along a time line. (For the record, I really don't think its THAT big of a deal.)

What I appreciate about CHUCK is that it truly is as episodic as it is serial. Just little spy stories based upon the show's broader premise (threat of discovery / confinement, forbidden romance and, oh yeah, computer in head). Each season moves the "guardrails" of what CAN happen a little bit - which I see as a very valid reason for delaying things like relationship progression (it would change the landscape before they felt like they exhausted the possibilities and there's no going back).

There's a serial progression in some cases (rooting out FULCRUM, romantic progression is mostly linear (with some backsliding), Volkoff, mid-S3, etc.) but many episodes can be digested individually (within the context of that season) or in arcs without worrying too much about "A came before B", at least over short spans of episodes. Just as the show had an undefinable genre it also had an undefinable format. It depends entirely on which episodes you are talking about.

Anchoring some episodes on the holidays near their air dates stretches the timeline out - and if we could ignore holidays I would contend that the overall story makes more sense over roughly three years rather than the five defined by air dates (four and a half, actually) - but since this particular block of dead space is so large I tried to manage it a little bit even though its not incredibly necessary. Even so, this approach will continue through the early episodes of S2.

Like the episode they revolve around, these installments are all about movies and hopefully deliver on a few previously promised scenarios in what I would consider interludes. Since UL is very much a Chuck / Casey buddy movie we begin there before covering some holiday issues, and some fallout before setting the stage for the episode proper...

.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to a slightly bastardized version of Jeff Cooper's four rules for gun safety, many, many films (the original Die Hard trilogy, a slew of Kurt Russell movies and several John Hughes movies - all referred to by name within the story; there's even Easter Egg references to _Unforgiven_, _The Princess Bride_ (again) and the television show _Gunsmoke_), or any Dead Kennedys' songs is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

XXV - Creatures of the Underworld (Part 1 of 3)

* * *

.

077: The Breakfast Club

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Wednesday, December 12, 2007; 8:15 am

.

"Is this really necessary?" Bartowski asked as he finished cleaning and sorting the parts of the four handguns field stripped in front of him and cleaned to Casey's satisfaction under his watchful eye. There were two of Casey's SIG 229s, a S&amp;W 5906 like Walker's and a smaller handgun that had made Bartowski grin like an idiot when he recognized it as a Walther PPK from the identification homework Casey had run him through on Monday.

"What if we have you pose as an arms dealer and your buyer tests you by seeing if you can assemble a pistol?" Casey replied.

"Well, I'd... Wait, does that ever happen?" Bartowski aborted an ill-conceived response and the exchange of questions in response to questions continued.

"No," Casey admitted with a combination of a scoff and a chuckle at the ridiculousness of the idea, "But it couldn't hurt to know your stuff. What if you have to get a functional weapon to me or Walker? Hmm?"

That seemed like an equally contrived scenario to Bartowski and Casey stepped to the table where Bartowski had proudly laid out the handgun components neatly on a towel. Casey reached forward to grab two adjacent corners of the towel in each hand, raised both hands and brought them together jumbling the contents of the makeshift hobo-sack before lowering the towel and its contents back to the table exposing a heap of unorganized parts and, before Bartowski could protest, said "Four guns. Ninety seconds. Go."

Bartowski was making good time as Casey observed the operation with an old-school mechanical stopwatch in his right hand. Bartowski had been amused that (even though she had been clear it wasn't her "real" name) both Sarah Walker and the maker of Sarah's preferred weapon - Smith and Wesson - shared the same initials and that it was slightly heavier than Casey's Sigs. Casey explained that its mass helps absorb the recoil and, although he preferred the Sig, the S&amp;W was a workhorse.

Bartowski had recognized the PPK as the "Bond gun" but Casey had grinned when his pupil realized just how small the pistol was in his huge but nimble hands. Casey taught him how to grip it properly so that he wouldn't get "bitten" by the slide...if he ever allowed Bartowski to fire it.

Or any other weapon.

Bartowski had finished assembling three weapons and briefly fumbled the recoil spring when he started on the PPK - which went together slightly differently than the rest - and Casey pressed a button of the stopwatch as Bartowski put both hands on the table and said "Done."

Casey scrutinized the weapons on the table and informed Bartowski that he had achieved his target time with fourteen seconds to spare as he turned to retrieve the cases for the handguns. While he waited Bartowski shifted the PPK in his hands first looking down the sights, then - murmuring the James Bond theme and visualizing the typical opening credits scene - turning the weapon to look down its business end as he had numerous times with weapons held by others.

It was a fascinating thing. A simple mechanical device - a tiny amount of pressure allows a hammer to fall, powder flashes and someone dies - and he wondered how he had managed to not soil himself in those instances where he had looked down a gun barrel over the past few months.

When Casey turned to see what Bartowski was doing he had a knee-jerk reaction and snatched the gun away with a snarl - as much at himself for his own unsafe handling as Bartowski for his stupidity. Stupidity which was only magnified as much by the younger man's usual intelligence as it was by the nature of his objection.

"It wasn't loaded," Bartowski foolishly explained out of reflex.

"Reads the epitaph of the idiot," Casey snapped before asking, "You positive?"

Bartowski was positive - Casey had given him only empty magazines for the assembly drill - but he gulped at the possibility nonetheless.

"I told you, always use a light to check a barrel if you have to but you JUST cleaned these. And an Agent should always know if your weapon is loaded. But since you're not an Agent, what are the four rules?

"All guns are always loaded," Bartowski intoned in the monotone chant of a bored teenager.

"And?" Casey prompted, ignoring his pupil's tone as he stalked in a circle around Bartowski's chair.

Bartowski held up his forefinger and raised another, then another, as he ticked off the next two rules, "Don't aim at something you don't intend to kill, finger off the trigger 'til the sights are on the target..."

Bartowski hesitated before raising the fourth finger when he said "See before you shoot," knowing he was forgetting something.

"See what?" Casey prompted again as he reappeared in Bartowski's peripheral vision, completing his slow circle around the younger man.

Bartowski's fourth finger went up excitedly when he recalled the elusive fourth rule in its entirety, "See before you shoot, target and beyond."

"Outstanding, Bartowski," Casey effused just before he smacked Chuck in the back of the head, "Remember all that and you might not accidentally blow body parts off yourself or people around you.

"Next time we'll do it for time until you can do under a minute. Then we'll do it blindfolded. If you're handing me weapons I don't wanna get killed for lack of shooting back. Maybe we'll even get you out to a range eventually."

Chuck rubbed his head thinking how ill-advised this whole thing had been as he protested, "Take it easy on the Human Intersect, would ya?" and he picked up and finished whatever microwaved frozen breakfast sandwich Casey had offered - now cold after not being allowed to touch it while cleaning Casey's handguns.

He didn't really want to fire a weapon - at a paper target or at another human being - and especially not for the reason he had originally suggested the idea: last-resort self-termination.

Casey had been all business as an instructor and even seemed to have some grudging respect that Bartowski had conceived the scenario - killing himself to prevent the intel he held from falling into enemy hands. Casey was surprised to find that, as motivated as he was to teach Bartowski proper firearm handling, he was also reluctant to ever allow him to fire one, especially considering the only expected outcome if the young man ever did so outside the confines of a firing range. Delays had been encountered and the expected delivery date for the new version of the Intersect had come and gone without mention but Casey continued to carefully lobby for less permanent options for securing the intel of the original Intersect.

Bartowski had hoped he had shown Casey recently that he was serious about his role on their team and had already moved to the other purpose of his visit. Bartowski wanted to show Casey that he definitely didn't consider him the "fat kid" on "Team Chuck" by including Casey in a recent development in his cover with Walker.

"After all, I come bearing gifts," Bartowski continued as he finished his sandwich, rose from his chair, wiped his hands on his pants and moved toward the backpack he had discarded by the door explaining, "We're doing another movie marathon."

Last weekend Bartowski had watched the _Die Hard_ trilogy with Walker. The cover couple had watched the first two with Woodcomb and Grimes on Friday and the third with Ellie the following night. Bartowski had given Casey copies beforehand with the suggestion that Casey could "split screen us and watch something entertaining while still upholding your patriotic duty to observe my every move".

Bartowski pointed out that approach would give Casey the option of synching up the film with the sound from the apartment if he wanted since he'd be hearing the audio anyway. Or Casey could go the other way - kill the apartment audio and watch a movie like a human being even if he did put them on PIP with the surveillance cameras.

Casey had in fact synched up the sound but had gone full screen with the movie. He had moved past the stage where he felt a need to observe "The Subject" (as he used to call Bartowski) in real-time and was sure that he would hear anything unusual. It wasn't even for surveillance purposes anymore and Casey recognized it for what it was: Bartowski had invited Casey to participate in movie night even though he wasn't physically present in the same room.

In the first of the three movies, the every-man hero had the sense to state a preference for westerns similar to Casey's and, although Casey had doubted Bartowski's tastes, all three were decent movies if a little over the top in their action sequences. Casey had grinned when he had heard Walker say "_Pacific_ Bell? At Dulles?" during the second movie even as he had noticed the same thing. Casey was actually curious to see what movies Bartowski had chosen next and craned his neck behind Bartowski's back as he rummaged through a backpack.

"Here we go," Bartowski said as he turned to face Casey and fanned out two of the movies, "_Pretty in Pink_, _Sixteen Candles_," Chuck grinned at the horror on Casey's face even as he held back the less polarizing _Breakfast Club_ and _Ferris Bueller_ DVDs.

"Just kidding Big Guy. I promised Sarah a John Hughes marathon. Sarah got her substitute to run the Weinerlicious on my day off and Ellie's really excited about it so we'll have a chaperone while we do our cover thing later. And tomorrow morning," Bartowski half-gulped. "If you don't want to listen in while we watch '_Pretty in Pink_', these are for you."

Bartowski handed Casey a different stack of movies, and Casey looked down at the first one bearing a scruffy, long-haired man wearing a tank top and an eye patch, carrying a MAC-10 fitted with a suppressor that doubled its length and a ridiculous scope while standing in front of the toppled head of the Statue of Liberty.

"I noticed you didn't know what Morgan was talking about when he mentioned Snake Pliskin so _Escape from New York_ is in there," Chuck explained, "There's a sequel if you like it. More of the same. But then I realized there's a bunch of great Kurt Russell movies."

Casey moved the top DVD to the bottom of the stack and Bartowski continued his commentary, "Another John Carpenter - Kurt Russell collaboration, _The Thing_ \- monster-horror, dated special effects, but cool".

Casey reordered the stack again, "_StarGate_ \- scifi. Aliens built the pyramids but, again, cool," and at Casey's disbelieving expression, "Its really good, I swear!"

And of the final movie, "Ah, _Soldier_ \- you'll like that one. Not much talking. Lots of grunts. I couldn't get my hands on _Tombstone_ \- I noticed you like westerns and its a Wyatt Earp, OK Corral thing - I'll try to find it for you. Oh! And there's the one about the U.S. hockey team that just occurred to me. And I resisted the urge to slip _Captain Ron_ in there. Seriously lots of awesome Kurt Russell movies."

Casey didn't want to know who Captain Ron was but despite the long hair on two covers, the buzz cut on the other two and the eye patch on the first one, Casey remembered the actor's face from his youth and muttered, "He's the Disney guy."

"What's that?" Chuck asked as he zipped up his pack.

"There were a bunch of Disney movies he did way back. Dexter Riley was the character's name."

"Little Casey watched Disney movies?" Chuck grinned.

"Wonderful World of Disney. Don't look so surprised and don't call me 'little Casey'," Casey snapped before continuing, "There were three channels not counting PBS. Had to watch something," he mused.

Then something occurred to Casey and he dragged out the word "Heeeeeey," before asking with a smug grin, "You know what one of them was about?"

Chuck shrugged even though, having just checked the Kurt Russell filmography, he knew exactly what Casey was talking about.

"It was called '_The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_'. Guy struck by lightning gets a computer powered brain," Casey shook his head as he set the DVDs down on the table. "There is truly nothing new under the sun."

"Aww. I thought I was unique," Bartowski said as he moved to leave for work. "Sure you don't want a ride?"

"Not today. They're dropping off my new loaner car later. Better at least be American," Casey menacingly muttered to no one in particular. Chuck knew better than to pick at that scab having heard Casey complain about his current rental car for days. "And I better not hear you and Walker doing anything other than sleeping tonight," Casey called after him as Chuck gathered his things and moved toward the door even though he had no intention of doing any active listening.

It was going to be hard resuming their sleepovers (with only one ill-fated attempt on the books) purely for the benefit of Ellie or Devon. All three of them - Bartowski, Walker and Casey - had decided that seeing Walker around the apartment on the mornings where one of the two doctors was not working at the hospital would further secure their cover. Sure she could just sneak in early in the morning but Walker insisted that they were all adults and that was an unnecessarily juvenile approach unless she was needed elsewhere overnight.

"I'll try my best to fight her off," Bartowski joked humorlessly and Casey was reassured by his slightly dejected tone that the two had every intention of sticking to the plan of creating appearances rather than making babies.

"Hey, Chuck," he called after him holding up the stack of DVDs, "Thanks."

"No problem, Casey," Bartowski smiled back, "Enjoy. See you at work."

Casey really hoped those government eggheads never managed to put the Intersect back together again.

.

* * *

.

078: Observances

.

Boxing Day

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007, 11:55 pm

.

Sarah was up watching a late showing of _Miracle on 34th Street_. She didn't really participate in Christmas but she loved the movies. She had watched _A Christmas Story_ a couple of times earlier - or more accurately had it on in the background while she wrapped up several reports - until the marathon ended at 8:00 and pretended that Ralphie's misadventures were getting a little old considering it had been running all day.

The truth of the matter was that she longed for the ritual of her youth when they had been a family and huddled around the television to watch a particular movie. She had managed to watch her favorite occasionally throughout her youth whenever she had access to a television, when her father had been off doing god knows what or worse, and when she wasn't directly participating in his scams of the Salvation Army or any other well-meaning, easily taken advantage of charity.

When she was a little girl she had been able to catch _It's a Wonderful Life_ on television throughout December but now it was only on once a year in the States - twice if you were lucky - and just as tightly controlled overseas. The last time she watched it was four years ago, opting to stay in and watch the story of the life of George Bailey over a night out with her team.

Chuck had invited her to participate in the traditional Bartowski family Christmas but she had put him off. He had been gracious about it and they agreed to say she had returned east to visit family while she busied herself running down intel reports of very questionable accuracy and low confidence on potential areas of activity. It was her traditional penance. Clandestine activity didn't exactly take the holidays off but even cover identities allowed for some downtime whether it was fictional family obligations or even bad guys pretending to be good while they fulfilled their own family obligations.

She always spent the time seeking to solve some sticky problem. This year she had missed the only US airing of Its a Wonderful Life last night while surveilling what were supposed to be possible Fulcrum affiliated locations throughout California and Arizona. If they ever were Fulcrum locations, they had all either been abandoned or reverted back to drug processing areas for local gangs which she had turned over to local LEOs.

It wasn't that she didn't want to accept Chuck's invitation but she had already been cozying up to him at movie nights, always with at least one other person in attendance so Casey didn't taunt them too badly. But she had felt herself being lulled into the warmth of his presence even though they had basically agreed - mercifully, without really discussing it - to put things between them into a holding pattern.

They had also agreed that they should each sleep over with the other when Ellie and Awesome would be present to see her leave the next morning or to note Chuck's absence and that had been a slippery enough slope. She had stayed with him for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it had been as awkward as the first time just without all the jealous accusations or the early interruption.

They had laid in bed facing each other in the dark talking and laughing about people they had encountered at their respective jobs, the junior agent the agency was using as a temp to run the Weinerlicious when it wasn't essential for Sarah to do so and, of course, the hijinks of the Buy Morons, as Casey called them. It was shockingly normal.

Nothing so intimate as to be considered inappropriate but she found she enjoyed his company even more under cover of darkness. In the dark she didn't have to constantly worry about the right people thinking they looked close enough or the wrong people thinking they looked too close. Eventually, her vision had adjusted and she had watched him in the low light as he purposefully closed his eyes before his face slackened and his breathing slowed before she went to sleep herself.

She had never cared for sharing a bed with anyone and, frankly, it was freaking her out that it wasn't freaking her out. She woke with a start the next morning when the sun began to lighten the sky to find she had somehow spooned behind him in the middle of the night. She willed herself to move but could not bring herself to do so until she finally shifted and placed her hand on his chest to feel his breath rise and fall until the sensation woke Chuck and she pretended she had just awoken as well.

She had similarly played possum last Wednesday. Wednesdays seemed to be the most common day when either Ellie or Devon was present at the apartment in the morning and it had already become a pattern. She had woken up before Chuck or Chuck's alarm to find their positions reversed from last time. They were lying on their left sides, Chuck was the big spoon and his right arm was draped over her which was fine. It was the right hand partly cupping her left breast that was problematic.

There wasn't anything particularly erotic about it. If anything his embrace was possessive. And even though that feeling was unfamiliar she was surprised to find it wasn't entirely unwelcome. It was protective. Or maybe it was just that she remembered having the oak tree dream again - the one she used to think of as her garden - and waking with that sheltered, safe feeling. The problem wasn't anything he was doing, it was his likely reaction when he awoke. Especially if he realized she was already awake and aware.

So she had laid there quietly, not fidgeting at all. And the skin crawling sensation she usually associated with lying defenselessly next to someone - wrapped in his slumbering embrace - simply never came. Although someone did come to the door because Sarah heard it softly unlatch, sensed the door swinging open and saw the room lighten slightly. Everything was perfectly still for a few seconds and then Sarah sensed more than heard the door lightly close and the knob must have been used to prevent the latch clicking into place as her shadows enveloped them once more.

Ellie.

Sarah smiled thinking that the brilliant, beautiful doctor had just seen her lying in her brother's arms. Even if it was all for show. Because that's what these sleep overs were for, right? Keeping up appearances? But even though it was intended to secure their cover she couldn't remember feeling more content.

Sarah wasn't sure if she had stirred or sighed too loudly or if the motion of the door had roused him but Chuck began to awaken. His hand lightly caressed her breast and he ground against her a bit as he stirred before he was awake enough to realize what he was doing. He stopped abruptly and slowly separated himself from her and she resisted the urge to at least grab his arm and pull it tightly around her waist.

As she played possum he began to withdraw completely but Sarah had to deliberately control her breathing when he lightly brushed his hand over the arm and shoulder exposed by her tank top. This balance between cover and reality they had silently agreed to and for the most part achieved was tenuous, dangerous and - god help her - intoxicating. She finally exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding when he gently brushed her hair from her face with his pinky and whispered her name - whispered the name "Sarah" - in her ear.

Now that she felt she could move without embarrassing him, Sarah rolled over to face him and stretched her arms over her head slowly and languidly, greeting him with a simple sleepy "Hi."

"'Morning, gorgeous," Chuck smiled at her in an instant of perfection before the spell was broken. He realized the intimacy of the situation and his smile dimmed. He offered her the use of the shower first but she deferred to make sure she got to speak with Ellie before the doctor had to report for her shift at the hospital. Ellie had beamed at her over their bowls of cold cereal while they made small talk and Sarah marveled at the simplicity of being "normal".

.

* * *

.

Chuck staying with her had seemed easier, at least on paper. He even offered to take another room - as long as the government covered the bill - but she insisted that he had to be in her room to not raise any suspicions. Tomorrow night would be the first time since she had supposedly been away for a few days, even though the distraction of her missions and investigations had been confined to a relatively local area. Ellie and Devon were both on late-Christmas shift and wouldn't be home to notice Chuck's absence until Thursday morning.

He had said he would just take the couch but that thing was not designed for someone as tall as him and it wasn't exactly consistent with their cover for her to bring a cot in. She had to decide whether one of them would sleep on the too-short-especially-for-Chuck couch (and she was sure that Chuck would not accept the idea of chasing her from her bed), the floor or both would sleep on the bed.

Or more accurately, how to convince him that he simply didn't have to worry about it. That they could share a bed without it meaning anything. And she almost laughed at herself, the Queen of the pre-dawn escape, thinking about how to convince someone to stay in her bed. At least she had all day tomorrow to think about it.

Sarah's thoughts were interrupted and she reached over to her nightstand to collect her phone when it chirped at her to indicate a new text message and she smiled when she saw the sender.

Ch_uck: You awake?_

It was a little unusual for him to text out of the blue, even more so at...she glanced at the clock... 11:58 pm, so Sarah responded with a text of her own, _"Yeah. I'm up. Everything OK?"_

_Chuck: Everything's great..._

The response indicated a continuation and half a minute later it did continue.

_Chuck: Just wanted to make sure you weren't asleep before I did..._

There was a slightly longer pause. Nearly a full minute.

_Chuck: ...this._

About ten seconds after the chirp of the text there were three sharp knocks at her door. Sarah couldn't help but smile to herself as she looked through the peep hole to see Chuck wearing a Santa hat with a backpack over one shoulder.

She schooled her expression, opened the door and began with "Chuck, I told you-"

"You told me you didn't do Christmas," he interrupted. "Roger Wilco message received and understood...

"OK, Captain Redundant," Sarah muttered and at Chuck's quizzical expression clarified, "Wilco is 'Will Comply'. Roger is just 'Message Received'. Can't very well comply to a message you didn't receive, right? You just said 'message received' three times, three different ways."

"Aaaaaaand now I know that, so Wilco on Christmas-"

"Really? Then," she paused placing a hand on her hip and nodding toward the top of his head, "what's with the hat?"

"Oh, I'm breaking it in for _next_ Christmas. You can't get started on these things too early. In case you didn't notice, it was officially 12:01 when I knocked on your door so definitely _not_ Christmas and you didn't say anything one way or the other about Boxing Day!"

Sarah couldn't help but smirk a little at Chuck skirting the boundaries of their agreement. "Do you even know what Boxing Day is?" she asked, her resolve crumbling rapidly.

"Does anyone? According to the wall calendar in the Buy More break room it is a thing on the 26th. I presume it has something to do with weight classes and pugilists but enough of that smarter than the room thing you do."

"You only say that since you _are_ the room."

Chuck pretended to ignore her snark even though he found her immensely entertaining, "Anyhoo, you already taught me something about Mr. Roger Wilco. Now it's my turn," Chuck said as he dug around in his backpack.

"You missed the traditional Bartowski marathon," he continued, "but I brought some oldies and some new ones to spread _holiday_ \- not necessarily Christmas - cheer," and he held up a DVD case with pictures of four people, a couple of whom she thought she recognized. "_The Holiday_? Granted a few actors mailed in some scenes but its really sweet. 'Journeys end in lovers meeting'," he quoted from the movie.

"Every wise man's son doth know," Sarah's continued, recognizing the quote from Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ and endlessly impressed with the cleverness of that line. The wonder it implies with just a handful of words and the combined implications of one journey beginning when another ends and lovers not possibly _being_ lovers _until_ they meet.

"Sounds like a fallacy," Chuck mumbled distractedly as he opened his backpack widely and rifled through the - admittedly - Christmas-themed movies he had brought so that Sarah didn't entirely miss the holiday.

"How that?" she asked, hoping he didn't disagree with one of the few sentimental thoughts she could distinctly remember ever having, and Chuck had to think about what words had just exited his mouth and Sarah's words that had prompted them.

"Oh...Umm...A logical fallacy. False causality. Just because a wise man _has_ a son doesn't mean the son is wise, or knows anything about anything, really. Right?"

Sarah was relieved that he was only questioning the second part and loved the way his brain worked completely separate from whatever enhancements the Intersect had bestowed. And she loved that she was capable of matching wits with him so she asked with a straight face, "Was your father smart?"

"Yeah, everyone we knew growing up said he was a genius. He..." Chuck paused as he looked up to see Sarah grinning with equal parts wickedness, glee and victoriousness at catching Charles Bartowski in a verbal trap, "Wise ass."

She just smiled smugly and Chuck hoped that meant she hadn't completely rejected his surprise plan for the wee hours of Boxing Day.

"C'mon, Sarah, I've got some really good ones in here," he resumed and he held up another DVD from the bag of goodies. "_Love Actually_? You really can't miss with Hugh Grant. Lets just pretend he never torpedoed his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley and that he is the guy that he is in movies. Its a bunch of feel good stories in one. OK, a couple of feel good stories and a few downers. It's better than it sounds. I'm not selling it well..."

"Are they all romances, too?" Sarah asked suspiciously with arms crossed.

"Good point, moving on," and he rummaged through his backpack for another option, describing it before he located it. "_Elf_? Human raised by North Pole elves on a quest to find his birth father who's on Santa's naughty list. Its exactly as awesome as it sounds."

"Not one of those claymation ones?" she asked. She had never liked those herky jerky puppets.

"Oh, no. I'm a big Snow Miser fan but this one is live action," he said hopefully, holding up the DVD featuring a grown man in a full elf costume on the cover and avoiding the fact that there was a romantic subplot.

That seemed like a safer option so Sarah replied, "Maybe."

"A-HA! Crack in the wall! Time to break out the big guns," and he pulled out two more DVDs, one of which she definitely recognized and she hid her delight.

"_It's a Wonderful Life_. Best. Ever. Used to be you couldn't miss it during the holidays but now its only on once or twice and they cram at least an extra hour of commercials in. This is the viewing experience. Aaand, only slightly less well-known, _Holiday Inn_. Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, love triangles, singing, dancing, an unfortunate blackface number..."

"Chuck, its the middle of the night. Are we going to stay up until four am watching cheesy Christmas movies?" Sarah asked as she wondered how he had such a knack for unknowingly knowing what was in her heart or head at the most unusual times. And they both realized that if she were really putting her foot down she would have done it when he first arrived.

"We're supposed to be keeping each other up to all hours when we stay over," he said in what had become his faux-salacious tone.

"That's Wednesday," Sarah said matter-of-factly, ignoring the joking innuendo.

"I can't believe we have to schedule our fake sexy times," Chuck lamented dramatically as he shook his head in feigned disbelief, "And anyway, it is sexy-time Wednesday. Officially Wednesday as of ten minutes ago."

"Wednesday _night_, you goof."

"I told Ellie you got back in tonight and I just couldn't stay away. And," he suddenly moved closer, into her personal space, pressing against her but she stood her ground and at the unfulfilled expectation of feeling their bodies crash together she looked down to see the full stack of DVDs between their stomachs, "I promised Casey - bible width at all times. Old and new testament."

Sarah looked down again at the stack of DVDs standing in for bibles between them as though they were students at a militantly chaperoned school dance and chuckled before squinting up at him suspiciously only to see him eagerly awaiting her response. She idly wondered just how much coffee or Red Bull he had consumed to have this much energy but realized he wasn't trying to do anything other than share Christmas with her. Or more accurately, make sure she had someone to share it with. How could she say no to that?

"Fine," she relented, pushing him away good-naturedly with a palm in the center of his chest, "The two classics. Fred Astaire first."

Chuck tried desperately to rein in his enthusiasm, instead commenting "The lady would choose Fred. Poor Bing."

"Weirdo," she accused as Chuck smirked at her before turning to set up their movie and missing the smirk in return when he turned his back. Chuck turned on the seldom used television and loaded _Holiday Inn_ as Sarah made herself comfortable on the bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. He skipped the previews and, as the movie began to play, took a seat next to the bed in the high-backed chair nearest the bed.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Giving you space," he gestured to the swath of carpet between his chair and the bed.

"Don't be silly. I don't bite," then struck by inspiration followed up with, "but just because I'm not allowed to."

She had meant to say it in that same comical tone that Chuck had used but, to him, coming out of her mouth, it sounded like sex on a cracker.

"Comments like that are why I'm staying in this chair," he said, refusing to look at her for the sake of his sanity.

"We're adults, Chuck. How is this different than you and Ellie's couch?" She was sitting perfectly properly, legs straight with ankles crossed and her hands in her lap, but reached over to pat the mattress next to her encouragingly.

Chuck considered for a moment that he was very, very aware that she was an adult but finally relented. "Pah! Fine. But try to control yourself," he grinned and she silently promised herself she would try - because she simply wasn't prepared to fall back down that hole again when they had just established a perfectly rational working arrangement - as he stretched his long legs out mimicking her pose and joining her on her bed.

Chuck lasted for the entirety of the first movie. Poor Bing indeed. Although it all worked out in the end and promises of bible widths were broken with no irrevocable harm done as Sarah simply leaned gradually toward Chuck and melted into him no differently than she would in front of his sister.

But Chuck started to fade out quickly during the second movie. Sarah noticed he was asleep as she watched the young boy on the screen - the one who would grow up to become an unconventionally handsome, hopelessly gangly, uncommonly kind, quietly strong, stubbornly brave man - ignore all fear to leap into a frozen pond where he would lose his hearing in one ear in the act of saving his little brother from drowning after breaking through the ice.

And that was how Sarah Walker found herself, a few hours past midnight - but since she hadn't fallen asleep yet she still considered it Christmas - watching her favorite sappy, non-adventure movie in her favorite position, resting her head on Chuck's gently rising and falling chest as he slept, wondering if love like that existed anywhere other than movie screens as a young Mary Hatch, after making absolutely sure she did so in his deaf ear, whispered a secret to a young George Bailey.

.

* * *

.

Valentine's Day Massacre

Thursday, Feb 14, 2008; 11:00 pm

.

Sarah was exhausted. She had texted Chuck when she landed and waited anxiously for a reply - simply: "_Cool. See you soon_" - to ease her mind that he hadn't been thrown into a bunker or worse in her absence. She was looking forward to seeing him tomorrow - and other people she had come to regard as friends and colleagues, like Ellie and Casey, of course - but had been traveling all day and just wanted to sleep.

After the holidays, Graham had decided certain flashes demanded immediate investigation but the origin and bizarre correlation between seemingly unrelated data points was too suspicious to pass along to other Agents.

Because of the unconventional logic of the Intersect and the insights Chuck had gleaned from daily intel reports Sarah found herself being sent, once again, to the far corners of the Earth, infiltrating suspect circles of associates and gathering what intel she could in the most expedient ways possible to enable a quick return to Burbank and her primary mission.

Having missed a planned online chat, Sarah had accessed a particular email account from an airport lounge earlier today and saved a draft of a birthday message to "Carina" and confirm her status but scoffed at the idea that she herself - or either of them really - would be celebrating the day for its more common reason. She dropped her bag by her apartment door as she dug out her key. She unlocked it, not even checking to see if the thread in the lock was still there which would have put her on high alert, and was greeted by an onslaught of red and white.

Balloons and streamers adorned the room and a trail of red and white rose petals - on closer inspection, paper petals - led from the door, thankfully _around_ the bed to the small table by the window. There were unlit tapers in dollar store candlesticks and a small bouquet of red and white carnations on the table along with two plates and a cooler sitting by the window, the contents of which she couldn't begin to guess.

She was standing just inside the still open door with her mouth agape when Chuck walked out of the bathroom, cradling a champagne bottle in a towel for a better grip and fiddling with the cage around its top, completely oblivious to the fact that she had entered, much less that she had reached for a ceramic throwing knife up her jacket sleeve and nearly skewered him.

"Chuck?" He jumped when he heard her voice, "What are you doing here?" she continued stunned.

"Sorry, I wanted to surprise _you_," Chuck smiled that heart melting smile at her once he recovered sufficiently from her startling him.

It was really quite sweet but completely unexpected. They hadn't discussed a Valentine's Day cover but she hadn't planned to be away for as many days as she had either. It should have made her happy - it should make anyone happy - but instead she felt all of the adrenaline that had seeped out of her body over the past twelve hours return all at once.

No one had _ever_ done anything like this for her. Her heart was racing and she really just wanted to back out the door and run down the hall. The realization that this was her apartment did nothing to ease that sensation but did help her to resist it.

Chuck's face fell at Sarah's stunned reaction, he grasped for an possible reason and he rambled an explanation thinking maybe it was the act of infiltrating her room where he had gone so wrong as she turned to close the door and moved past him to throw her bags on the bed. "I...uhh...Eduardo, at the front desk, he's seen me here a bunch of times and he saw me carrying this stuff and I told him I just needed a few minutes so he let me in-"

"I mean, who is this _for_, Chuck?" Sarah asked as she sat heavily on the bed and looked around at the decorations in the room as she continued, "Ellie's not here. Morgan's not here. So, again, why are you here?"

"Right. Right. I, uh... you've just been... I just, uh, wanted to do something nice for you. And to..." he thought better of saying "And to see you." when he realized another possibility as his imagination spun out of control. "Oh! I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed..." and he didn't voice his jealousy fueled thought that maybe she had planned to see someone else tonight, that her late arrival might have derailed that or even that the rendezvous was still on and now she had to clean all this up so it didn't look like she did it.

"Never mind... just... you're right. I'll leave this," he held up the key he must have used to gain access to her room, "with Eduardo."

"No, Chuck. He saw you come up," she closed her eyes and sighed heavily. God damn it, he was so sweet. But she just wanted to take a shower - she was pretty sure there was still blood in her hair and definitely under her nails and, if not, she wanted to at least erase the persistent sensation. It hadn't been her usual massacre but it had been a hell of a fight and the last person she wanted to see her in this state was Chuck.

"Hey, are you OK?" Chuck asked.

"Yeah. Just a long trip. And an unproductive one."

"So, not a _Holiday in Cambodia_, then?" and, at her quizzical look, "That's a..." then realizing there was no reason she would know that song and that the trip to Cambodia had been anything but a holiday, "...never mind...so, didn't find them?"

"Found where they had been but they were gone." That much she had later confirmed in ways that required a quick exit from the country.

"We'll find them. I'm just glad its not you."

"I'm sorry I snapped at you, Chuck."

"It's OK. I get that Valentines is a little-"

"Its just not something we have to advertise." She said of the dangerous holiday even as she looked at the harmless place setting at her table where they had previously shared a few meals before softening to the idea. "We can just let people know we spent it together and they can write their own narrative. We don't have to put on a show when it's just me and you."

Chuck looked crestfallen. "OK, I'll just-."

She wants to say "Stay," but is sticks in her throat. Why? Why does she want him to stay? And why should he agree to do so if she asked? Where can this lead?

Instead it comes out as "Chuck. I just wasn't expecting this. Just...can I take a shower before I say or do anything stupid?"

"Not possible. But...uhh..." Chuck stammered still thinking he had completely overstepped, "It's your place."

"Thanks."

.

* * *

.

Sarah let the scalding hot water cascade over her, washing her hair thoroughly twice and she breathed deeply trying to convince herself of several things, many of which she should have said to him in one way or another.

He was just doing something nice. He doesn't know how close she came to attacking him. He doesn't know how awful she feels coming out from under a different cover. How much harder it has become to not be Sarah. He's perfectly welcome here. He didn't overstep. Much. He doesn't expect anything to come of it. He was just doing something nice.

Nice. It defined him. He didn't bring champagne and... whatever... in a lame attempt to get laid. For two months he hadn't pushed. She had been away longer than expected and he probably just didn't want her to feel excluded from a holiday. Like he had insisted on crashing her avoidance of Christmas. Things hadn't been awkward between them since then. They did their roughly weekly sleepovers and half of those were intel reviews or actual investigations anyway. Ellie just assumed now that, if her brother was out, he was out with her and that was exactly what they hoped to achieve in the first place.

These few times Graham had called her away to investigate certain flashes herself, she had offered to let Chuck stay here without her but he - wisely - pointed out that someone might notice her leaving with bags while he stayed and think it was weird. He also didn't like that his flashes were causing her to put herself in harm's way while wondering why Casey didn't cover some of the investigations. Luckily he never mentioned that and Sarah would never share her suspicions anyway.

Chuck had been hesitant to bring up this flash - and many others but he always did - knowing that Sarah would likely be dispatched to cover it. But a possible location on two captured, presumed dead Agents was something he couldn't ignore.

What if it was her?

Graham provided a substitute to run the Weinerlicious, just as he did when Sarah simply wasn't needed because Chuck had a day off. The junior agent, Betty, knew Sarah was CIA like her, but had been led to believe they were both covering for an unseen third party who only occasionally had need of the restaurant as a surveillance post and cover. A brazen lie is the best kind. A lie the other person just assumes without you having to sell it? Even better.

Or a lie like Graham pretending that it absolutely had to be Sarah who ran down some of these cases. She had hoped to meet with Graham and size him up but even when she had arranged a meeting at his office, it was conducted via video conference as he was conveniently elsewhere. She wasn't sure whether he was punishing her or testing her some more but she knew it was one or the other. Possibly both.

Making her remember her place.

That was why she tried to run those missions as the old her would have. Although she found that she was slightly less decisive and brutal, that she was using her infiltration skills more to avoid such things, trying to find a balance she could live with. Was she just as effective? Or would the old her - the Enforcer - have laughed at her?

And that was why she had been less than kind to Chuck when she unexpectedly found him inside her apartment. She hadn't shed that identity fully and didn't want him to even look at her. This trip to Cambodia had required a bit too much of both - playing the foolish tourist who didn't know she was in over her head - seducing her way in, fighting her way out - it was more than just road grime that made her feel dirty.

But he knew none of that and just wanted to do something nice for her and she could let him do that. So she donned her robe after she quickly toweled off her hair - she wasn't trying to impress him, right? She'd have to duck back into the bathroom after she retrieved some clothes but she stepped out the bathroom door to at least thank him for the gesture.

When she did she saw the candles were lit - their flames reflecting off the glass of the window with the darkness of night on the other side - the open champagne was resting in an ice bucket and a room key on the table next to a piece of Maison stationary tented beside the flowers.

She looked around the room as though there were any sufficient cover for him to hide behind and, not finding him, she moved to the table. She opened the cooler he had left behind to find a few individually packaged cheesecakes from a place Ellie had raved about. She looked back to the door but knew he was long gone as she sat heavily in the nearest chair to read the note that simply said "Happy Valentines Day" in his messy scrawl.

With him gone, she thought it all looked as though she lived at some boarding house for women from a bygone era and the staff had done it as some sort of hospitality gift for bachelorettes with limited dating prospects.

She poured a measure of champagne into her flute, paused and filled the second one too as though Chuck was sitting where he was supposed to be before calling down to the desk to tell Eduardo that Chuck could keep the same key he had left behind. Sarah then retrieved the cheesecake, toasted no one in particular and eventually drained both glasses herself.

.

* * *

.

Wild Conjecture

Westside Medical Center Cafeteria, Burbank, CA, Mon Feb, 25; 2:15 am

.

"Government agent? Seriously, babe?" Devon Woodcomb asked his girlfriend with equal parts amusement and disbelief and Ellie Bartowski just grinned and shrugged in response.

It was rare that they got to eat lunch together; if you could call it lunch at 2 am even though it was in the middle of their shifts and her brother Chuck, no stranger to shift-work, had once declared that middle-of-shift always equated to lunch.

The couple had each talked about pooling their gifts for their upcoming anniversary and she suspected that he thought she suggested a television because she thought it would be something he wanted. He often deferred to what he thought she wanted rather than offering an opinion of his own.

It was a little frustrating to Ellie and she wondered to herself if Chuck and Sarah had these types of communication issues where they didn't just say what they really meant.

So Ellie had mentally reverted to a game she and her brother had learned from their father when they were little. The game was played with odd characters they spotted in the hospital as the pieces and the competition was who could create the most fantastical story about each person.

Ellie's rapid-fire mental process had combined the two thoughts and she had blurted out a poorly worded question asking what Sarah's real story was - the woman _was_ a bit of a mystery - and their speculation had spiraled out of control in a game of oneupmanship from there. But the rules of the game demanded a relatively believable story to go along with even the wildest theory.

"Why not?" Ellie asked after finishing a bite of her cafeteria salad, "You know all the weird stuff Chuck comes across on people's computers. Remember that kiddy porn thing two years ago that he reported?"

"Yeah," Devon cringed, "don't remind me."

"My point is, he didn't just report that. He helped them ferret out the network of people the guy was trading images with. Didn't he say it was pretty cleverly hidden and he was glad he could help? I mean, he volunteered to do it for free so he could keep his name out of the reports-"

"And reduce the risk of someone recognizing his hacker fingerprints," Devon interrupted.

"Right. Maybe he saw something else - something important - and reported it to the authorities. Or maybe someone just saw how good he was at getting into computer systems. Point is, there's all kinds of reasons a government agency might be interested in Chuck."

"So, what? Sarah's just his contact or something?"

Ellie thought about Sarah's face whenever Chuck was in the room, how her brother's girlfriend looked at him when she thought no one was looking, and a smile engulfed Ellie's entire countenance when she addressed the question. "That would mean she's not into Chuck and she's _definitely_ into Chuck. I told him as much ages ago when he was having a confidence crisis. No, how about this for a story: she _was_ his contact but now she's more. Or wants to be."

Then with a salacious look, "We've seen her stay over but we haven't exactly heard...you know..."

"Maybe they're just quiet? Don't want to be rude," Devon suggested as he ate another bite of chicken breast.

"Or maybe," Ellie said, getting into the game, "its that they can't be together openly and she's taking what she can get as long as he's helping them with... whatever it is."

"Them?"

"Yeah, what if John's in on it too?" Ellie grinned at her added wrinkle to the story around a fork-full of pasta salad.

"Nah...you think?"

"Why not? He and Sarah showed up around the same time. He's a sweet guy but he's pretty serious all the time. So she's just one of Chuck's two contacts and she doesn't want to seem unprofessional or get called out by John so they're skirting the line."

"I've talked to John a little," Devon mulled over the story Ellie had created to fit their acquaintances, "He's retired military. Marines, I think. He's just a hardened guy. Morgan says he sells the hell out of appliances at the Buy More. Takes it really seriously. I could see him being all by-the-book."

Devon smirked before he turned the conversation to the fantastical story he had settled on for Sarah, "You know my theory, though."

Ellie rolled her eyes at the suggestion he had made during a similar discussion once before, "Call girl? Devon, that's insulting. It's something one of those Nerd Herd creeps would come up with."

"No crazier than government agent," Devon challenged, "Hear me out. I think we can agree she's beautiful, right?"

"Obviously," Ellie quirked the corner of her mouth at Devon's hesitancy to admit he had noticed the unavoidable fact.

"But she's not the usual L.A. aspiring actress-slash-model, food service worker. She moved here to get away from a 'relationship' but do we know it was _that_ kind of relationship," he said dramatically.

"A pimp?"

"Maybe. But I'm thinking stalker client or something. And I think it would be more madame than pimp though."

"So Sarah Walker is one of Miss Kitty's saloon girls?" Ellie joked.

"Work with me here," Devon smiled back, "If she's a call girl, she's a high priced one," and at Ellie's glare Devon defended his thought process, "There are some actual pieces of evidence here that might not scream 'call girl' but they sure as hell scream 'money'. That car of hers is a hundred thousand dollar car. That place she lives? Its a luxury hotel and apartment building. It's not cheap. She's either a secret heiress or she's into something not entirely awesome."

Ellie had to admit that - with his family history - Devon knew what money looked like and decided to play along rather than defend Sarah's honor "OK, then why work at that Weiner shop?"

Devon shrugged. "Why would a secret agent work at a Weiner shop? Maybe she's trying to break away from it. See if she can live on the cheap."

"Here in L.A.? Good luck."

"That's exactly my point. Somehow she can afford a place that probably costs more than ours working at a Weiner shop. Maybe they're each trying to see if they can pool resources and make a go of it. Maybe he's really uncomfortable with the whole thing and she's embarrassed of it."

Ellie paused to consider the believability of her boyfriend's story and found she really liked the idea of Chuck and Sarah trying to plan a life together. She twiddled her plastic fork and worked through the supporting evidence.

"Sarah's said she has family money. And she does keep going back east for family 'stuff'. It would explain why she's so closed off about her life...she does keep weird hours sometimes when Chuck's trying to get a hold of her," Ellie mused before shaking her head, "but no, she's smart and beautiful-"

"We both know those things aren't guarantees a person won't find themselves sucked into a life they don't really want."

Ellie considered what Devon meant. Something somewhat embarrassing from before they met that had been an issue between them at one time - or, more accurately, caused a rift because of his concerns about his family finding out, "You think I should tell her about senior year of undergrad?"

"Not saying that. That's up to you. I mean its not that bad, babe..." sure, he says that _now_, Ellie thought, remembering when he hadn't been quite as understanding about a blemish of her past "...you did what you had to do to keep you and Chuck afloat - but that look on your face is probably how she feels with you. Afraid you'll judge her for...whatever 'it' is."

Ellie considered the idea that Sarah might be hiding something because she was afraid of being judged. Her brother's girlfriend was skillfully evasive in conversation. She didn't want to push her to share but Sarah always kept conversation relatively benign from her side yet she was always fully engaged and clearly enjoyed rather than feared their time together.

At least by exploring these ridiculous extreme fictions maybe they could show Sarah that, whatever it was she didn't want revealed about her past, she was safe with them. That Chuck was her future.

Ellie sighed heavily. "Devon, they could be so happy together."

"I think so too but that's just not our call, babe."

"But it doesn't matter what she's hiding from. I see how she is with Chuck. I mean, obviously, its more about what Chuck wants but that's the woman I want as a part of our family."

_Our family._ His own casually accepted inclusion was not lost on Devon. He had long considered Chuck a brother and knew Ellie was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A prominent, affluent east coast family looking down their nose at a woman they considered a practical orphan trying to "marry up" only revealed their elitism. Because he knew the incredibly beautiful woman across from him to be the most brilliant, kind, funny and sweet person he had ever known and he was lucky one when she had given him just one more chance.

Maybe most of his family didn't see her the way he did but, before she had passed, his great grandmother certainly had. He had taken Ellie back east to meet his family when they got back together for what he was determined to be the final time. Ellie was a neurology intern with a bright future and Devon was prepared to defend her against the onslaught of judgement from his parents which, surprisingly, never came.

It never came because Nana had taken an immediate liking to Ellie - calling her "better than all the phonies in this house waiting for her to die" - and the elderly woman had later slipped Devon the ring she had worn for sixty years. Mostly, she said, to keep these "vultures" claws off of it. He hadn't been ready to consider it then, even with notions of forever in his mind, but he was ready now.

They - Chuck _and_ Ellie - were his family.

And maybe it was long overdue that he do something to make it official.

He broke off his thoughts about proposing to Ellie to return to the conversation. "So if she has lived a life like that - something she's afraid we'll judge her for - and even my extreme example doesn't matter to you, why wonder?"

"Curiosity. But also, if its holding her back - even if its nothing as bad as all that - wouldn't it be better if she felt comfortable sharing it with us. Or at least with Chuck?"

"How do you know she hasn't?" Devon asked before clarifying, "Shared it with Chuck, that is. Maybe Chuck is just keeping her secret because its her secret."

"Maybe but Chuck is a terrible liar. I would know if he was keeping something from me."

"Mothers always say that about their sons," Devon grinned at Ellie's protectiveness of her brother and she threw a crumpled napkin at him for his recurring observation that she was as much mother as sister to Chuck. "OK, babe. How do you intend to make her comfortable sharing some incredibly shameful, sensitive deep dark secret?" he asked.

"I might have an idea or two," Ellie smiled as they both stood and gathered their trash, "just for fun, we'll test your crazy-ass idea first."

Unlike the strangers they often watched to play this game, this was someone on whom she could gather more data and if there was one thing Eleanor Bartowski was exceptionally good at, it was gathering and analyzing data.

.

* * *

.

Turnabout

Weinerlicious, Burbank, CA; Monday, Mar 10, 2008; 10:30 am

.

Sarah had been back in Burbank for the last two weeks. She had been sent away for nearly two weeks after the Valentine's Day debacle to follow up on leads from her Cambodian excursion and it gave her time to think about how her uncertainty in the field had hurt her and the hesitancy of coping with it had hurt Chuck.

She had been letting Graham get the better of her. She had blamed herself enough for the way she had approached missions in the past. She had tried to dial back the degree of violence she employed but at the expense of tactics she would rather not employ. Then she had felt sick over those tactics. It was a cycle that could not continue.

She needed to just accept that the job that she was so good at would get her killed if she didn't do it the way she knew how. She didn't know why she was second guessing herself so much now.

She had pulled Chuck aside when she had returned to Burbank and told him she was sorry she ruined his surprise. He laughed it off - said it wasn't a big deal and that he should have known better than to spring something like that on her. He joked that he might do the same thing in green and white next Monday for St. Patty's Day. She was surprised that it was so easy to smooth things over but that was the unspoken arrangement between them and if he was honoring it, then she should too.

But it was like casual sex without the sex and Sarah was also surprised that she didn't know how she felt about that. Did she _want_ him to act more put out over it? Well, that would be pretty hypocritical of her.

Was she frustrated that their time together was _so_ platonic? She was actually relieved that they could at least enjoy some of that natural intimacy that came so easily between them because she always had the backstop of their situation keeping her from going any further out on a limb. Their earlier missteps had proven she wasn't ready for that.

He was following all the rules and there was nothing complicated about it. So just what the hell was her problem anyway?

Sarah shook off the thought - whatever the problem was, it was definitely her problem - because she was truly relieved that things had returned to mostly normal. Ellie and Devon had been working so many nights and doubles that she hadn't been able to justify sleepovers but she had given Chuck the key to her place that she had approved after he scammed it off the doorman. She doubted he'd ever use it again but he at least had it in case of an emergency.

Chuck stopped in to see her regularly, like the dutiful boyfriend he was pretending to be, and when investigations and intel reviews had left little time for more elaborate cover dating he voiced no displeasure.

And there was that weird feeling again. The one that said something was wrong that she couldn't quite identify. She shook it off as she carefully maneuvered around the new upgrades to the front counter of the restaurant. It was a good sign that Graham was investing in the location as a surveillance station. He had even hinted at more potential upgrades and any indications of allowing her mission here to continue indefinitely were good signs for the longevity of all involved.

She wondered if she had passed his tests. If he was convinced that she was still his Agent. Maybe turning a blind eye to that nagging, empty feeling had managed to keep them all alive.

Her mood lightened considerably - with no trace of that empty feeling though she schooled her features - when Charles Bartowski entered the restaurant, holding the door first for a departing customer, then beaming widely at her.

"Hey," Sarah greeted him, "Try this."

She had been waiting to see what Chuck thought of this latest monstrosity of german food-franchise engineering. "It's the new breakfast corndog with country sausage and syrup wrapped in a pancake," she proudly announced the completely absurd food product as she held it out toward him.

Chuck just smiled at her enthusiasm considering this fragile balance between them. How hard it had been not to push - to just let things be between them - hoping for a day where everything wasn't so complicated. But today he had a little adventure that he thought Sarah might enjoy.

"Thank you, but maybe a little bit later," he deflected the offered food on a stick which sounded just bizarre enough that it might actually be a surprising guilty pleasure. "I have some serious business to discuss. Matter of national security," and he paused dramatically when that gained Sarah's full attention before almost immediately spilling the beans, "Casey's ex-girlfriend is in town."

"What?" Sarah was appropriately stunned by many aspects of that news. "How do you know?"

"I flashed," Chuck shrugged, "Her name is Ilsa Trinchina. Super-hot, super-sexy and staying at the Grand Seville as we speak."

Sarah considered all the grief Casey had given her over Bryce - before and after he had returned from the dead. "Does Casey know?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," Chuck replied. "Almost ripped my head off; it must've been a pretty bad break-up. You know for the longest time, I always imagined Casey was built like a Ken doll, you know, downstairs."

"I don't know what kind of woman would go for a guy like Casey," Sarah mused idly as she wiped her hands.

"I was, uh, I was kind of hoping you'd help me find out," Chuck suggested.

And at her lukewarm response to the idea, "Ilsa is a civilian. She's a foreign national. The Intersect has, like, nothing on her except for some love letters that now I'll never be able to scrub out of my brain."

Sarah laid out exactly what Chuck was asking. "You want me to go behind Casey's back, reallocate CIA resources and violate this woman's privacy, so you can find out what their story is?"

Actually, turnabout was fair play, right? Casey knew almost everything about Chuck and too much about her. Maybe it was time to even things up.

"Tell me you're not curious," Chuck said and Sarah felt the corners of her mouth quirk upward.

And, seeing her decision on her face, Chuck gave her that smile that made spying - something she had discovered to be a bloody soul-crushing grind that she had lost herself in for years - feel like a grand adventure for a good cause once again.

Or at least an entertaining one.

.

* * *

_To Be Continued..._

* * *

.

A/N2: Yes, there was a Disney film called _The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_ long before Chuck-who-wears-Chucks uploaded a government database into his brain. There truly is nothing new under the sun. There's also apparently a remake where those tennis shoes are specifically Chuck Taylors but I would advise you to watch the original. (Or choose your own preference between 18 year old Kurt Russell and 25 year old Kirk Cameron as a more believable college student.)

I love Kurt Russell movies. Obviously. I left out several, like a guilty pleasure (_Overboard_) and the other John Carpenter / Kurt Russell feature film collaboration (not the Elvis TV movie) for obvious reasons. (If its not obvious, just ask.)

_The Holiday_ is another guilty pleasure - set around Christmas but not really otherwise a Christmas movie - because Eli Wallach is absolutely fantastic.

And I suppose its possible that someone somewhere has not seen _It's a Wonderful Life_, I'll even accept that a few people don't like it (its almost too sweet) but if you have seen it and do like it, I am sure you remember what young Mary Hatch whispered to young George Bailey knowing he couldn't hear her... ;)

The Bartowski 'Stranger Strangers' Game was not Chuck's creation and Ellie plays it with Devon as Chuck plays it with Sarah. And I thought we could examine a commonly depicted scenario / theory about Sarah a bit - one that the Nerd Herd debated back in episode three - in the context of these unsavory episodes. More to come on Ellie's curiosity (and similarities to her brother).

Warm weather makes for slower writing but stay tuned!


	26. XXVI: Creatures of the Underworld (2:3)

...wherein a woman's return from the dead raises many questions...

Canon Reference: Remainder of (so, most of) Episode 112 ("Undercover Lover")

Contents: Three chapters, 2K - 3K each; only 8K-ish words of story (the rest is this long intro note and a twenty five hundred word dissertation on American film, Casablanca, spy tropes and story choices at the end; seriously, longest author's note ever... which I felt better about when it was attached to a single 25K-and-growing chapter); and yes, I amended the previous installment title because this arc is now three parts rather than two...

A/N: First, thanks for all reviews from last time to which I have not yet responded. I was struggling with a piece of this one and assumed you would appreciate me working that out more than responding.

There are three great Chuck / Casey conversations in this episode but I distill them down to one, and there's a great opportunity for a Sarah talk with a drunk Ellie but I downplay that a little in favor of a different POV character in the _next_ installment. Also, please forgive the stylized depiction and loose accuracy of depictions of the wars in both Bosnia and Chechnya and the atrocities committed there. Its not too far off the mark, thought. Do your own research; despite minimal media coverage of their magnitude in the U.S. they are among the horrors of our time. Ilsa's tale is correspondingly dark, not solely in the way you might expect, and loosely based on some elements of _Casablanca_.

Like the episode this arc revolves around, the first part of this installment was all about movies. The episode itself has includes numerous nods to the classic film _Casablanca_ and it's interesting because that film was forced to mask certain goings-on in a similar fashion. (See end notes for my love of the film despite its somewhat-to-moderately offensive premises, some things that film buffs probably consider common knowledge and some ties to the inspiration I drew for this Ilsa).

Honey Pot Warning: You should have figured out that I have no intention of dancing around it by now but there's a reason this episode often gets glossed over in canon fanfiction. The script of "Undercover Lover" tries to dance around it but this episode inherently includes one of the two most blatant usage of the classic spy trope "honey pot" scenario (a spy in a serious enough relationship with her mark that marriage is on the table) that you - as a viewer and a reader - have to: choose to ignore, accept the sanitized version (as the show presented) or deduce and accept what I believe to be the intended implications (as presented here).

Ilsa is not just dating her mark, she is engaged to him. He's a mob boss, not a youth minister. Usually the implications of such a thing go unspoken and I won't speak specifically about them very much if at all. I am on the fence whether this "downplaying" is a respectful approach or does a disservice to the idea of such an underlying sacrifice. This episode was originally aired as the first part of a split double-feature in the midst of the writer's strike and, with the strong finish of "Marlin", allowed little time to dwell on the implications but exists as a data point that can be (and has been, here and elsewhere) used to define the fictional universe.

Aliases (or Not): As I was considering a potential backstory for both Ilsa and Casey, the possibility of them knowing each other under alternate identities during their previous relationship was considered but, strangely, both Casey and Federov know her by her full name of Ilsa Trinchina making such a trick very difficult to pull off. Sarah even notes that the woman Chuck flashed on likely recycled Ilsa's identity making a ret con that uses other cover identities undesirable as they would be a bit jarring to the reader / viewer.

To me, Ilsa's farewell to Casey at the end of the episode also implies that Ilsa Trinchina was never Ilsa's real name but then why wouldn't it have changed between 2004 and 2008? Why did Chuck flash on her three different times but with two distinctly different impressions of her? In "hard canon" she had been investigating Federov since at least 2002 (pre-Casey) and carried the same name throughout and clearly / presumably was not embedded with Federov during her time with Casey.

The idea that she was never "Ilsa" also leans too much on the crutches of "spies never tell you their real name" and "she's just a spy so of course she did THAT" so I steered HARD the other way (knowing full well there is a gutter on both sides of the "middle road"). However, it also occurred to me that Ilsa, when she's not calling him "Sugar Bear", not initially knowing that he has any kind of military background or other reason to call him by his surname, only ever refers to Casey as "Casey"...

.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership or claim to the Kurt Russell movie _Soldier_ or a little known film called _Casablanca_ is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

XXVI: Creatures of the Underworld (Part 2 of 3)

* * *

.

079: As Time Goes By

.

Grozny, Chechnya, 2004

.

Ilsa Trinchina left Bosnia when she was barely eighteen years old, fleeing from the worsening conflict to Paris with her French mother and Serbian father in the spring of 1992 before everything fell apart completely. A brilliant student, she had already been slated to attend Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris - the Paris Institute of Political Studies - later that year but the mixed religions of her parents made remaining in Bosnia impossible and accelerated that process.

The French government had been working with her father for two years due to his knowledge of his home country's infrastructure before the DGSE approached Ilsa. Over the next three years, she finished her studies then trained as a logistics officer. Her first deployment had been to assist in stabilization efforts after the First Chechen War. It was in 1997, almost a year after the fighting had ended, that she first met Ortsa Umarov.

He had been a school teacher before the fighting and was appointed leader of a guerrilla combat group by its members shortly after the fighting began. He had lived through many of the atrocities she had been fortunate enough to have avoided in her home country. Horrific things she learned from her few surviving friends or written in the untold stories of the last moments of those who did not survive and those few school friends who were never accounted for.

Ortsa was eight years older than her but despite the horrors he had seen, retained a sense of wonder about the world that brightened her own. Made it seem as though communities, cities and countries torn apart by war could be healed through dedication, hard work and sacrifice. He was larger than life, especially for such an unassuming man.

Apparently she wasn't the only one who thought so because he was elected to local office even as the couple saw each other as frequently as they could manage in secret. They planned to be married when she reached the end of her four years of government service.

She had been meeting with her superiors in France discussing that very thing, and her reluctance to continue as a French intelligence asset within the new government as the future wife of one of its leaders, when the fighting broke out again in 1999. Ortsa had been pulled reluctantly back into the fighting and she had been prevented from returning.

Ilsa renegotiated her term of service to be trained as an undercover operative and serve for an additional three years - five more in total - in exchange for assurances that Ortsa would be granted asylum if things went as badly as the analysts predicted after Kadyrov abandoned the insurgency and offered his support to the Russian forces.

When the situation deteriorated beyond all hope of recovery, she had been on her way to meet her fiancée and get him out of the country when a Russian profiteer - operating with the backing of the Russian government with the initial purpose of using his smuggling network to disrupt Chechen supply lines - had captured Ortsa and fifteen of his men. When this man learned of Ortsa's political standing, all of his captives were summarily executed.

Their dismembered bodies were displayed on buildings and lamp posts - pieces of the men bound by razor wire at every street corner on several blocks of the main thoroughfare through the ruined city of Grosny - as a macabre display of power. Ilsa arrived days later, the day the locals had been ordered to clear the carnage in advance of an announced UN delegation which never came.

By the end of the war, this profiteer had used violence, rape, kidnapping and fear to build an empire of drugs, guns and girls throughout Chechnya and simultaneously strengthen his network within the very country whose support had now made him practically untouchable.

This ruthless and vicious man, Victor Federov, had become one of the most notorious criminals in the world and still the Russian government protected him. Ilsa, now a career spy, worked behind the scenes for years, occasionally working undercover herself within Russia to infiltrate his network and deal with its members in as vicious a manner as they utilized whenever her own assignments intersected with his dealings.

She was finally able to tie him directly to the Paris commuter train bombings in 2002 which opened an official investigation and she was given control of a decentralized investigative team. She operated from the shadows, known only by the codename "razorwire" - as much from her use of a piano wire garrote as her own propaganda - and finally, in 2003, one of her teams captured Federov in Turkey as he continued to expand his network along the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

She had finally captured the killer of the man she never got to call husband and thereafter had divided her time between other operations in Europe and gathering additional evidence to bolster the case against Federov. It was while doing the former, on a day of no particular consequence at a flower market in Rome, when she met Casey.

He had stuttered like a fool when he had introduced himself with his first name only, eventually revealing his full name of Casey Smith bookended by an introduction in stilted Italian. Recognizing him as American, she let him off the hook by responding in English to his obvious delight but remembering to include the Russian accent of her current photojournalist cover. She surprised herself by using her real name for the first time in years, since her private war against Federov had begun and she accepted his invitation to a late lunch which neither of them needed, him ordering food only to preserve their place at the table.

She and Casey had only known each other for a few months, and he travelled as much as she did, but he was sweet and funny and gentle with her in a reverent way that defied his massive build. Maybe she had a chance at happiness after all.

He had offered to meet her here in the relative ruins of what used to be Grozny, before it was all but destroyed by the war. She had told him not to come. She was here to lay ghosts to rest which she had not yet told him about. He met her there anyway.

She continued under the guise of a photojournalist as she examined and documented locations of previous known criminal activity for use in the trial and he claimed that there could be energy development opportunities but she suspected he just wanted to follow her.

She was glad to have him with her.

They spent the evening together and he gifted her a beautiful pendant when she woke him to get an early start so she could close this chapter of her life and, possibly, begin another. As she left the half-ruined hotel, one of the few operating in the city, she decided that once the trial was over she would tell him everything.

When she entered the café, she almost took the man's head off when he grabbed her by the arm, making her drop her camera in the process, until she recognized him.

"Ilsa! It's me!" Henri pulled her toward the back of the building and she stopped trying to retrieve the camera she had dropped near the door when she recognized her colleague. "We have to go now! Your location has been leaked."

"What do you-?" she began before a fearsome picture began to form, "To who?"

"I don't know how to tell you this..." Henri began as he pulled her through the kitchen.

Ilsa's felt her stomach turn and her skin turn cold. "No," she whispered as Henri pulled her along and she stopped resisting completely.

"Two days ago. An inside job. He's out. And witnesses are dropping like flies," Henri continued as he led her out the kitchen exit and into the alley.

"Why didn't someone contact-"

"We didn't want to reveal more than they already knew. They've killed most of the team and the rest are in hiding. They only have your code name and, apparently, your location. We don't think they have anything precise enough to target-"

It was then that all the air was sucked out of the world as a massive explosion threw them both across the alley and her world turned black.

.

* * *

.

Grand Seville Hotel, Los Angeles, CA; Monday, March 10, 2008

.

Ilsa had spent two weeks recuperating from both the initial blast and the second explosion which killed Henri and partially buried her alive as it collapsed the part of the hotel where she had been staying. She held out hope for Casey's survival - perhaps he had evacuated between the two blasts if only he hadn't listened to her suggestion to go back to bed - but his was not among the bodies recovered and the company he worked for reported no contact with him. She checked numerous times until she was eventually told they could no longer release information to her and directed her to an equally unhelpful U. S. State Department.

After three months of mourning another lost love the case was taken from her entirely as her term of service was nearly complete. It was then that she decided to erase herself from the world.

She herself had already been declared dead for her own safety but she made the bold decision to hide in plain sight by stealing her own identity with enough differences - such as using her mother's birth date and a year that made her four years younger on paper - to make it look like a stolen identity to anyone who dug deeply enough.

To make her the age of the girls Federov liked.

Not that he likely ever learned her real name but when Victor Federov was captured again it would be by Ilsa Trinchina. Not the same Ilsa. She was gone. But once she met the terms of the deal she had eventually made with her former agency and dismantled his entire network - and not before - the agreement was that she would ensure no trial was required. Before Ilsa vanished again, her last act would be to erase Victor Federov from the world. Then he would know who she once had been.

Although she retained her name, everything about her background was officially altered. She had been listed as dead in the blast yet "razorwire" had continued operating - deflecting attention from her and raising suspicions that someone had simply assumed a recycled code name after a successful, if heavy-handed, assassination.

A new woman who not only called herself by her former name but had once been that person had resurfaced to the notice of no one as so often happened in this part of the world with its secret wars that the larger world knew or cared little about. She would use her former self as a false skin to carry out her own secret war and continued her futile efforts to dismantle Federov's organization and dispose of the man himself with just enough progress for her former agency to accept the terms that she would leave when she was done.

Her superiors had not been pleased with her demands but by early 2006 she had already gone rogue and had attracted Federov's attention before they even knew her location. Her former superiors disapproved of her intentions and tactics but she made it clear she was moving forward with or without their assistance. If the DGSE wanted to disrupt the biggest crime syndicate operating right under the noses of many of their foreign counterparts they would have to play her game. And her price was the life of Victor Federov.

She had been just another floozy at a party when they met but Federov was intrigued when Ilsa severely injured another woman vying for his attention by putting her once beautiful face through a bathroom mirror. When she was alone later, in a brief moment of regret, she justified it as saving the girl from future misery. Federov believed Ilsa was a poor girl from the streets but she was ruthless and cunning with a darkness that was intriguing to him not knowing he was it's cause.

She continued orchestrating agency efforts against Federov even as she ingratiated herself into his confidence and was surprised how many of his Russian contacts were in the United States. He had gone international, thought he was invincible and she was determined to erase every bit of his organization from the face of the Earth.

She was close to closing her trap. Convincing him to briefly abandon his strongholds to have his cronies pay homage at their wedding as a show of power saying, "Your associates should show the proper respect for your wedding."

She had done what she had to in order to get him to mostly swear off of his other girls - druggies and prostitutes desperate for his approval and willing to do the most demeaning things - and keep his attention directed toward her. She had kept him "happy", eliminated all competition for his affection in one way or another and become the Queen Bee of his household.

She had access to everything. And once she filled in the last few missing pieces based on their wedding attendees, she was going to kill him slowly and painfully.

He had taken everything from her and she was going to repay him in kind.

That was how Ilsa Trinchina found herself at the rehearsal dinner celebration the night before she married not the man she once intended to marry or nor the man who had restored her faith in love but the man who had stolen both of them and any hope of happiness away from her.

She watched as Vahe danced with a member of the wait staff that he apparently believed to be his cousin and then sucked in one of the hostesses, a beautiful blonde who the waiter apparently knew based on his apologetic reaction as they both played along.

She understood that mindset completely. Playing along. Doing whatever it took. For as long as it took.

Within a matter of days they - excluding the waiter and the hostess - would all be in custody. Federov would be diverted from their honeymoon to the black site where she would have her promised quiet time with him and her vengeful plan, years in the making, would be complete.

She was still undecided on the manner of his demise. She intended to flay him alive. Or use every medical technique she had researched to keep him alive while she made him watch her dismember him and pin up parts of him around the room. Or some combination of those and other torture techniques. Her only fear or misgiving was that eventually choosing one option would negate the possibilities of all others, somehow making the end less gratifying.

For now, all things were possible. And the thoughts of each and every way she could possibly have her revenge gave her a pleasure she no longer tried to hide. A sadistic joy that was somehow mistaken for the joy of a bride marrying a sadistic man even as her distracted fingers found the pendant around her neck that had been given to her on her last happy day.

Four years ago.

Then all the air was sucked out of the room when she looked up and saw the face of the long dead man who had given the necklace to her.

An apology slipped from her lips before she could stop herself. An apology for not searching hard enough. An apology for everything she had done since. An apology for giving up on hope and refusing to give up on revenge. But she quickly recovered. That was another person. Another lifetime. Another universe.

That wasn't who she was anymore.

It took her a moment to concoct a ludicrous amnesia story but one that might help him to move on. To leave her behind while she finished this. Because she had to finish this. Stopping now would leave only the monster she had become to get this far and that was unthinkable.

He asked her why she was here. Why the shell of the woman he once knew was here. And when she heard her walking nightmare if a fiancé call the room to order she couldn't bear to look her lost love in the eye when he heard the announcement that was surely coming so she turned away.

"Please," Federov called to the room full of his cronies in his heavily accented English, "I'd like to introduce you to a woman who will make me the happiest man on earth by becoming my wife. Ilsa Trinchina!"

She could sense Casey's heart breaking even as she turned her back on him. Turned her back on a man she once loved to resume the role she had been playing for nearly two years.

Turned instead toward the path to avenge the deaths of the only two men she had ever loved.

Turned toward a man she despised.

She couldn't allow herself to think about any of that. Her course was set. That Ilsa was dead. Victor had killed both men she had ever loved. And in doing so, had killed her.

She tried to convince herself that she had turned her back on nothing but the ghost of happiness.

She let a man who had once loved her and whom she set out to avenge watch her walk into the arms of the man who had killed them both.

She said a silent prayer to a god she had turned her back on when she believed he had turned his back on her.

She prayed for her Casey. Prayed that, for his own sake, he would turn his back on her.

.

* * *

.

080: The American Dream

.

Buy More, Burbank, CA; Wednesday, March 12, 2008

.

Chuck and Casey had fled the Grand Seville when Victor Federov had passed out on the bed they were hiding beneath. They had helped Sarah break down the surveillance post and returned to the Weinerlicious and utilize the new data panel installed there to verify Chuck's intel and figure out what the hell had happened to produce two completely independent flashes on the same person.

The best theory Chuck could come up with was that the papers Chuck found in Ilsa's possession contained a birthdate that triggered an entirely different set of files in the Intersect than previous flashes and that the initial identification had blinded him to subsequent flashes until new data was obtained.

Chuck had been as surprised as anyone when Ilsa walked into the Buy More. A data panel had been installed in the media room at some point, similar to the one at the Weinerlicious. Casey had routed it there, listened in to small portion of Ilsa maintaining her cover via the bug Chuck had left behind and she had apparently back-traced the bug.

Chuck was guessing the last part because, when he moved to meet her halfway in the middle of the center aisle she held up the bug and Chuck mentally kicked himself. He could have gotten her killed if Federov had seen it. Ilsa crossed her arms and cocked a hip in a too-familiar way which must be taught to all female spies, looked at him sternly and she wasted no time asking, "So, Casey is a spy? Like me?" without preamble. And, Chuck noticed, no accent.

Chuck nodded to a less exposed location by the television wall before answering in a low voice when she followed, revealing information that could no longer believably be denied. "That's actually two questions but, yes. He's a spy. The best."

"And everything I thought I knew about him was a lie," Ilsa muttered under her breath.

"No. No, no, no," Chuck replied, "I mean, Casey is a spy but I don't know if he's, to answer the second question... like you." Chuck said slowly and Ilsa narrowed her eyes.

"What I mean is, he told me - after a lot of pestering on my part - about the day he met you. That day at the flower market in Rome. And I saw a side of him I've never seen. Maybe you didn't know every truth about him - just like he didn't know every truth about you - and maybe some of the details you both did know weren't true but if you thought he loved you... that wasn't a lie."

The corners of Ilsa's mouth quirked upward at Chuck's nervousness, his rambling explanation but most of all that romantic notion. "And you?" she asked of Chuck, "Are you his partner?"

"Just field support for Casey and his partner. She's the best too."

"She?" Ilsa asked and Chuck noted a hint of jealousy.

"Just partners. They are both extremely professional." Chuck defended the two agents he trusted with his life before adding quietly, "To a fault," and it was Ilsa's turn to note the wistfulness in Chuck's voice at that last thought.

"May I see him?"

"Only if you answer one question to my satisfaction."

She narrowed her eyes at him again and he said, "it's only fair. One for your two. But it is a big question."

"Fine, field support. Ask your question."

"Did you ever love him?"

"Yes," Ilsa whispered as she hung her head slightly but did not look away.

Chuck knew he was no expert on reading the true thoughts or intentions of a spy but he studied her expectant face long and hard and was convinced of the truth of that single word.

"Follow me."

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Echo Park, CA; Wednesday, March 12, 2008

.

Chuck braced himself before walking into the lion's den. Whatever he found in there, it was his fault. But when Ilsa had shown up at the Buy More she hadn't seemed like the same heartless bitch Casey had been trying to convince them, and especially himself, that he wanted to believe she was.

Even so, Chuck couldn't believe that she was so committed to her cover that she was willing to go through with marrying the man she was investigating.

He once thought that he could never imagine such a thing. Now it was all he could think about as he let himself in with his "emergency only" key.

"A lot of scotch and a little Neil. Everything okay, buddy?" Chuck asked.

"Just enjoying myself a little R &amp; R."

"Mm-hmm," Chuck had never seen Casey so not okay.

"Want a drink?" Casey asked.

"No, no. Thanks, though, I really appreciate it. No, just, uh, just thought I'd check in on you, you know, what with Ilsa getting married in an hour and-"

"Thanks for reminding me. Here's to John Casey dodging another bullet," Casey said raising a glass of whatever poison he had chosen to get him through the night.

Chuck was surprised that Casey was drunk enough to start spontaneously sharing, "It's not like I want the wife and kids and the Little League practice and the minivan and the Costco runs on the weekend."

"Yeah, really, you don't? 'Cause I- it, it seems to me that you'd kind of be into the whole American Dream."

"Nah. I do what I do so all those other slobs out there can have it."

"What, uh, what would you say your dream is?" Chuck asked.

"You're looking at it," Casey grinned sardonically and took a big bite of a moderately burned Hot Pocket before asking with the half chewed food product still in his mouth, "How 'bout you, moron? What's your dream?"

"I haven't thought about that in a long-"

"Bullshit. Its all you think about. Maybe you're the one who's emotionally constipated, hmm?"

"Freedom. How's that for an American dream? Free to do whatever I want, whenever I want."

"Hmpfh," Casey grunted. Freedom was a dream he could get behind. "Like what?"

"Get outta the Buy More for one. Get my life back on track. Wife. Kids. Little League. Minivans and Costco runs, I guess. Sorry about the emotionally constipated crack. I was just trying to get you to open up. But I'll take all of..." he gestured in a vague circular motion with one hand, "...that... as boring as it may sound to a spy like you."

Casey considered Bartowski's answer. And a similar discussion with Walker where she had wondered aloud about the possibility of many of the same things one day. About motherhood for Christ's sake.

In another universe, the two of them would be a good fit. If only they weren't on borrowed time. The Intersect had experienced some delays but the scientists involved were making progress again. It had only been a matter of time. And bunker or burial plot, Chuck Bartowski's future was not at all like the one he had just described.

Casey also considered his previous conversation with Bartowski. Yesterday at the Buy More. The one where Chuck had coaxed him into opening up about Ilsa. The one where Bartowski had accused him of being an emotionally constipated robot. Where he had expressed a hope that if he could understand what he and Ilsa once had then maybe Bartowski had a chance to find love. Where - before they knew that Ilsa was a spy too - Bartowski had pointed out what an unsavory character Casey was "on paper". Not realizing that he was also describing the woman he probably envisioned making those Costco runs with him.

All these unwelcome thoughts and three healthy glasses of Johnnie Walker had convinced him of exactly one thing: none of them were getting out of this unscathed. Possibly none of them alive.

And maybe it was the scotch talking, but this idea that just because someone was a spy like him, or like Walker, and didn't seek out a more normal existence they didn't occasionally long for that type of normalcy. Even if they had no idea how they would cope with such a thing.

He had come to terms with it long ago. But his partner... That's what Bartowski just didn't understand.

"See, Bartowski...that's where you're fucking this all up. Speaking of being emotionally constipated, and as long as we're braiding each other's hair, how about you cut Walker some slack?"

Yep. Definitely the scotch talking.

"What?" Chuck reacted. "She's the one who-"

"Shut up."

Casey didn't care what petulant little excuse Bartowski had or what little imbalance in the cosmos or his interactions with Walker he thought was "un-fucking-fair". It was time to face some facts about their partner and what it means to be in love with a spy. Casey leaned toward Chuck to draw him in and spoke as clearly and slowly as he could with his senses slightly dulled.

"Listen and listen good. I've been doing this a really long time. But before that I led an interesting but not extraordinarily bizarre life. You know I hold the rank of Major in the Marine Corps so I don't feel like I'm going way out on a limb to confirm that I once went the the US Naval Academy. Don't bother looking. There's no longer any record of me there. But everyone who was there when I wast there took their service very seriously but from your point of view it wouldn't be terribly different than calling that my 'college days'."

Chuck bit his tongue rather than pointing out any comparisons between military academies and colleges as Casey continued.

"After that I was regular military for a long while. Some classified shit but not the life of an intelligence operative either. I had a real life and a real relationship too. A good one. A great one. I made some choices that took me away from all that and went to the NSA but I had the opportunity to experience life and make my own choices about my future. But even so I found someone again that I thought I...cared about. And you see how shitty that turned out but at least I had that for a while."

"You mean someone you loved. Why can't you say-"

"Not finished and not the point. You said it yourself, I'm a G-Man assassin. International spy. An unsavory dude. Wanna know something? Walker's the same...but very, very different. How old do you think she is? 'Bout your age, right? Her 'official' record is Swiss cheese - which tells me a lot in and of itself. But I've pieced together some things and - don't pry - they're things you shouldn't know unless she tells you.

"She's a human weapon, Bartowski - she'd kill me for putting that idea in your head which only proves the point but its true. How long do you think she had to train to get that way? It took me four years. Two years to get good, two more to get really, really good. Someone - or several someones - compressed that down for her. She's good. She's very good. I should know, I've fought her. And, on paper, it should have been easy to overpower her but it wasn't."

Chuck was trying to stay quiet but this was news to him, "When did this happen?"

"Not important but during that whole Zarnow clusterfuck. Over you. Now shut up this is a one time deal." Casey drained his glass to help him get through this and Chuck marveled that he had so easily forgotten how hard Sarah had fought for him from the very beginning when Casey continued while pouring another glass of scotch.

"How many languages do you think she speaks? More training. She's got special ops experience, not just training. Which is insane - women supposedly aren't permitted to serve in special ops units but it's obvious to me. Must be a CIA thing or, more likely, she's just special. More training. Near as I can figure she's been running major intelligence ops for nearly five years. When did all that training happen? When did all that spying happen? Do you get what I'm trying to tell you?"

That Sarah was extremely capable wasn't news to Chuck. She had demonstrated it that first night and he was, frankly, in awe of her. Casey laying it all out there didn't really change Chuck's perception of her. "I hear what you're saying but I don't understand."

Casey searched for a relatable way to explain this at the bottom of his glass and came up with Chuck Bartowski's language. Movies.

"Remember that movie you gave me with the Disney guy? The one where he barely speaks."

"Yeah, _Soldier_. He says, like, barely more than a hundred words in the whole movie."

"And he was selected at birth to be a soldier. Raised as a soldier, not understanding anything else. Any other type of life."

Chuck just looked at Casey blankly trying to envision such a heartless Sarah Walker. For him at least, that did not compute.

"Christ, Bartowski. I don't know when Graham got his hooks in her but it was a long damn time ago. Not at birth but when she was practically a child. I would guess out of high school but she's packed so much into her career and seems so young in a lot of ways that I'm thinking earlier than that. Or she dropped out - not for the usual reasons, 'cause she's smart as hell, maybe she was bored - or she just finished high school very young. My point is, she's not career military. She didn't pursue a career in the CIA after an intellectually stimulating and socially rewarding four years at college. Somehow they got her early. Very, very early. And I doubt she's had anything remotely resembling a 'real life' ever since."

Casey swirled the ice cubes in his drink watching Chuck process this information before he continued.

"So stop treating her like a sorority girl who chose to go to the party where all the cool jocks were hanging out instead of the clam bake at your frat house. Bryce fucked you over at Stanford, but you had a good thing going there for four years. Remember that movie? The soldier one? What happened if you weren't up to snuff? She was probably getting the shit kicked out of her on a daily basis and learning languages under the threat that a slip in pronunciation meant a bullet in the back of the head.

"Flying fucking helicopters when she could barely legally drive a car - she talked you through landing one. God knows what else. You got a raw deal and then hid at the Buy More for five years while she was running intel ops around the world. You're starting to look like you might be getting your head out of your ass on the whole hiding from the world thing but just appreciate the fact that she's trying to do what's right for you. She and Bryce had a thing but he was really the only option available unless she was also supposed to be a nun while saving the world? She stuck up for you when you barely knew her and has ever since. Just," Casey sighed, "Just cut her some fucking slack, OK? She has no idea how to handle you."

"Casey, I know you've got this in your head and this Ilsa thing is fucking with you but Sarah hasn't been 'handling' me, she's-"

"No. That's not what I mean. And you're lucky I don't kick the shit out of you for suggesting it. About either of them. If she were 'handling' you, you'd be happy as a clam, you would have no idea that's what she was doing and she wouldn't really give a rat's ass what happened to you. Despite the perks, I don't think that's what you want. When I say 'handle', I mean the other way. Like a real girl. A normal girl. Just stop being so fucking stupid."

"Are you saying she thinks that's how I see her? Just this machine that the CIA created?"

"I'm saying she doesn't know how you see her. And she's afraid to know. Either way."

Chuck thought about that for a moment and considered pouring himself a scotch. But the pressing question was about what a spy would and would not do when their back was against the wall. "Casey, why is Ilsa marrying this guy?"

"Because she thought it was the only way. Because she decided it was that important. I don't have to like it. I'm entitled to hate it. But anyone who doesn't respect it, has no idea what kind of sacrifice they're talking about."

"I'm sorry, Casey. She should have chose you."

"Maybe she's doing more good this way than I can know. Maybe the cost of a different decision was something neither of us could live with. She's gone. She's been gone for a long time. There's nothing to miss. Besides, Chuck, it's not like Ilsa left me empty-handed."

"What's that?" Chuck asked as Casey held a necklace and pendant up to the light.

"Mmm, just a cheap little trinket I used to think meant something."

Casey tossed the necklace he bought for Ilsa four years ago onto the table. The one that never left her neck in all that time. Even when Federov bought her jewelry she risked her cover by refusing to wear any other necklace, saying it was a family heirloom when it was clearly relatively new. When it landed, the transmitter Federov had slipped onto the back of it while she slept after her abnormal behavior at their reception broke loose and skittered across the table.

Chuck flashed, grabbed the heavy tumbler out of Casey's hand and sloshed whiskey all over Casey's rug when he smashed the small device into pieces over and over.

"You mind telling me what that is?" Casey asked unaffected.

"It's an RX-77 long-range audio transmitter," Chuck looked up at him in horror.

"Someone was listening in on Ilsa?"

Now he was catching on. "With a Russian-made bug." Chuck tried to lead him to the importance of the discovery.

"Did they hear all that?" Casey asked of his drunken commentary on his partner.

"No. I don't think so. Low gain and it was in your pocket. But Ilsa wore it out in the open."

"That means they heard last night. That means Victor knows she's a spy," and even a drunk Casey was too fast for Chuck.

"Whoa, uh, hey, Ca-Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, where are you going?"

"To stop a wedding, Chuck."

"No, no, no. No, you're not, no, you're not. Scotch and driving- very, very bad combo and as far as I know, also illegal."

"You're absolutely right. You're driving. I need pants!"

.

* * *

.

081: Another Universe

.

* * *

.

"What if, in another universe, I deserve you?...

...Because you could have loved me forever.

And maybe

in another universe,

I let you."

Gaby Dunn

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Echo Park, CA; Wednesday, March 12, 2008

.

Ilsa woke in a place she had imagined she would only be again if the cosmos didn't judge her too harshly after she died.

She was lying in Casey's arms.

Casey was his name, just not his first name. She knew it was true from hearing the other man, who she now knew as his friend Chuck, and the blonde woman, Agent Walker, talking to him. He said he had given it as his name to her out of reflex and had to scramble to explain it by tacking on a meaningless "Smith".

If only she knew that it was who he was now but not who he had always been. That he was not a stranger to the idea of becoming someone different while trying to remain who you are underneath.

He also said he didn't get tongue-tied often but he had when he had first seen her.

He was as sweet as she remembered. If only she was the same person.

But the cosmos was fair. Things balance out. People get exactly what they deserve. Eventually. You pay for what you get, one way or another. And she doesn't belong here.

Not anymore.

He had asked her if Ilsa was her real name. She wasn't sure why she lied when she simply said, "No" and didn't volunteer another. They had both working for intelligence agencies when they met. It was easy for him to believe.

When she had set out to avenge Casey's death, she had made herself into a new Ilsa. She swore that the old Ilsa was dead and let the new Ilsa devour any memory of her to fuel her hatred. It had seemed so balanced. So just. The cosmos would approve. Ilsa would impose Ilsa's vengeance. But instead the new had destroyed the old.

And now, she didn't want to be any version of Ilsa anymore. There was no going back. She couldn't think of herself as Ilsa any more. Not if she wanted to ever put this behind her. Her murderous intentions. Allowing that man to use her body to achieve her goal. She had to run away as far and as fast as she could from what she had become.

Last night had been wonderful. But it had also been as much about something she could never have again as it was about something she thought she could never have again. How could he be with her knowing what she had been for the past two years?

She had asked him that very question through silent tears in the dark of night as he adored her with his mouth and hands. Allowed to indulge in her body as he too had thought he never would again. As she had thought she would never want any man to do again. And his answer was simple. Too simple.

He said, "Because I still love you."

But how could he possibly? She didn't feel any more deserving of that love in the light of day than she had in the dead of night as she drew patterns on his bare chest until he woke.

"Good morning. John." She tried the foreign sounding name and decided he would always be Casey.

"Good morning, Ilsa."

"Not Ilsa for much longer," she said sadly.

"I understand that. Comes with the territory."

"How long have you been a spy?" she asked.

"Of one kind or another? A very long time. But I nearly quit once."

"When?" she asked, fearing the answer. But she had to know.

"Oh-four. In a place called Grozny. Waking up like this next to a woman very much like you."

"I'm not like her at all anymore, Casey," Ilsa said quietly.

"That's OK. I'm not like him. People change, Ilsa."

"How did you change after I died, Casey?"

"Not for the better."

"Me either. Do you think that somehow we could magically recapture what was taken from us?"

"I'd like to think so."

"I'd _like_ to think a lot of things. But there are other things I _know_. Four years ago. You could have walked away then. Could you just walk away now?"

Casey wished he had a different answer.

"No. But it's not just me. There are others who would be affected. We're doing something good here. I don't know how much longer I can hold it together but I can't let it fall apart."

"And it would fall apart without you?"

"I'm responsible for a key piece," Casey said. Yet he knew he was losing the battle to keep Bartowski alive. He was too big a risk. It was just a matter of time.

Was he himself truly any different now than before he met Ilsa? He was still trusted by those who made unthinkable decisions to do the most heinous things to relatively good people.

"I'm sure the other two could manage," Ilsa offered, "Chuck is a handful but he has Agent Walker." She said that last part meaningfully.

"Noticed that about her, did you?" Casey smiled at Ilsa, and that Walker's link to Bartowski was so obvious to even an outsider and even in a highly charged situation.

"She pulled a pistol on a hundred armed men," Ilsa said, "She's either completely insane or in love."

"She's not crazy," Casey replied leaving the other implication up in the air, "And he's the key piece. I can't say much more than that."

Ilsa could tell that he wanted to tell her more but wasn't allowed. "I understand, Casey. Foreign agent," she smiled and pointed to herself, "that would be treason. And an even bigger betrayal of your friend."

Casey considered the truth of the matter. Somehow, Bartowski had become something he could only describe as a friend. And despite claiming to have what he liked to consider a code of honor, Casey had been poised to betray that friend since Day One.

"I guess we both became things we never wanted to be."

"Casey, what happened to you? That bomb-"

"Was convenient," he continued. "I thought some nasty people had found me - people I had caused a lot of problems for before I met you in Grozny - and I had been traveling under that Casey Smith alias so, I disappeared."

"I couldn't find you. The bomb was for me. And I told you to stay. I thought I killed you."

Even if he had know she wasn't killed in the blast, Casey wouldn't have considered that possibility when his identity was buried in the rubble of the hotel. Ilsa's burden of the things she had done was heavy enough without making herself carry that around.

"You can't blame yourself for what they did, Ilsa. Even if I had been killed. It's never the fault of the people doing their jobs and trying to bring down evil people. It's always the person who pulls the trigger who is to blame."

_And the people who ordered it_, Casey thought, _but the person who pulls the trigger is never blameless_. He also thought for a moment about his friend. And who would be to blame when he killed him. Beckman? Graham? The man in the White House? Or the man who pulled the trigger?

"I've pulled a lot of triggers Casey," Ilsa said quietly.

Casey knew she was looking at him for some sort of absolution. Or at least wisdom or understanding. But he was quiet for a long time thinking about pulling triggers.

He had tried to convince himself that Bartowski understood. Ever since Bartowski had brought up those extreme scenarios. But they were just that. Extreme scenarios. And he tried to convince himself that Bartowski also understood that Casey was the person the government sent to resolve problems. Like Walker. Casey had also become so good at it and taken so much pride in it that he eventually came to enjoy it, as awful as that sounded. He figured that was part of what was eating at Walker. That she had once been the same way.

Casey knew that Bartowski wasn't stupid enough to not realize any of these things about either of them so Bartowski had simply chosen to fall for Walker anyway - or just couldn't help himself.

And chose to befriend an equally broken John Casey - or just couldn't help himself.

He had somehow seen something redeemable in both of them.

Casey wondered when he had he become the man you sent to put down people - especially a person like that - when they had simply become inconvenient?

There was always a good excuse before. They always seemed to be too deep into some sordid activities. But Bartowski? What had he done that was so horrible? Did anti-piracy laws carry the death penalty?

He had nothing to say that would ease Ilsa's guilt. She had killed and slept with vile people to achieve her mission. He had killed many more. She was right. They had nothing to offer each other anymore. So on the topic of having pulled a lot of triggers, he eventually said the only thing he could, "Me too."

They laid there silently and Casey considered everything about Walker that he had told Bartowski. He knew some of what Ilsa had done to get the job done - to avenge him. Knew it consisted of things that would make some men walk away from someone they once professed to love. Knew she didn't think she was worth loving any more.

He had told Bartowski to take it easy on Walker. Told him how lost she was in his world. But he hadn't considered until just now that Walker might not just be unsure how to allow herself to be happy. She might also think she doesn't deserve it. She hadn't done exactly the same things as Ilsa - to the best of his knowledge and understanding of the woman - but maybe she felt exactly the same. Just as dirty. Just as unloveable.

He looked at Ilsa and wondered whether she felt the same way Walker did. Lost and alone. And if both thought they deserved that existence. Earned it, in fact.

How could a man like him who had similarly earned such an existence be able to convince her any differently? Had he ever truly been deserving of more than the brief time they had together?

Ilsa had laid her head on his chest while he had been thinking grim thoughts.

"Could ever we have been more?" she sobbed quietly into his chest.

"Yes," he both admitted and lied. "In a different universe."

_In this one_, he thought, _they just never had a chance_.

"And your partners? He is protective of you. And the woman, I've not had the pleasure of actually speaking to her but I didn't need to. She is very protective of him. Could they ever be more?"

Casey contemplated his answer and finally admitted something he had known on some level from the beginning of this assignment. From the moment a woman - one he only knew as one of Graham's dangerous lackeys but now knew to be so much more - had pulled a gun on him on a helipad.

They were all doomed. And only one of them didn't deserve it.

Could Bartowski and Walker ever be more? Could Bartowski, a man who had never harmed a soul, forgive her sins? Understand her demons?

Casey smiled despite himself as he remembered exactly who the man was he was thinking about.

Of course he could.

Bartowski wasn't like him. He _was_ the type of man who could convince Walker she was worthy of a better life. Because he believed it.

Could she ever forgive herself? Allow herself to be happy? Believe herself deserving of such a man?

"No," Casey admitted out loud and to himself for the first time.

Not that they couldn't do all of those things together, they were just never going to have their chance. He had told Bartowski all of those things about Walker, given him that guidance, for nothing. There was too much to overcome. Her past and his fears could possibly be overcome. If it wasn't for the matter of the unsavory G-man assassin who would likely be tasked with Bartowski's eventual assassination.

There was a balance to the risks of too much intel in the hands of any one person not actively working with an intelligence agency and the risk of making them disappear. Bartowski wouldn't be the first person eliminated for knowing too much. For seeing too much. And, after all, he had seen and knew _everything_.

If Casey did what the risk equation demanded, he wouldn't deserve happiness with Ilsa any more than she believe she deserved it with him. Killing Bartowski wouldn't mean one less threat to America. It would simply mean Bartowski's death. And for Walker, the death of all hope.

If Ilsa had done what she had when she thought someone had killed him...

"There's just too much in their way."

He watched Ilsa's face. Saw in it her desperation to believe that happiness was still possible for someone somewhere. Maybe he could have made her believe what he had once believed for them. If only he hadn't seen so much since.

She was reading his face too. Hopefully at first and then she seemed to realize there were no happy endings to be found here when she said, "Perhaps in a different universe."

Ilsa knew she should be leaving. She should let them both heal. But not without one more memory of him. Of what they could have been. If only theoretically.

She kissed him deeply and shifted her body on top of his.

"Show me what we could have been in a different universe," she pleaded as she leaned in to press her body against his and kiss his neck, "Make me forget about this one."

He had said he still loved her. Even though she hated herself.

That would have to be enough.

.

* * *

_To be continued..._

* * *

.

(Yes, continued! Again! I had no idea I would write so much around Undercover Lover. Warning: This note is longer than some STORIES!)

A/N2: For those who didn't do their own homework from last time, the line from _It's a Wonderful Life_ that makes Sarah question whether such intense, unquestionable love is possible was George Bailey's future wife, her younger self, even as George basically berates her for being an empty headed little girl when he has such grand plans for future adventures and seeing the world, just before the distraught pharmacist for whom he works (just having learned of the death of his own son) kicks the ever loving crap out of him for deliberately not making a delivery he knew to be tainted (saving him from accidentally poisoning a child in his grief)...

Mary whispers: "Is this the ear you can't hear in?" and when he doesn't answer...

"George Bailey, I'll love you until the day I die."

(_It's a Wonderful Life_ (1946))

.

* * *

.

The Kurt Russell / John Carpenter collaboration which I excluded for "obvious" reasons was _Big Trouble in Little China_. Upon reflection the reason wasn't exactly obvious, it was because I know I'm going to have some circular references between the story, its movie references and canon homages and don't want things to be too "meta" until they have to be addressed. For those who do not know, Sarah's father's "name" is also the name of Kurt Russell's character in BTinLC. Chuck will point this out at some point and was never fooled. And for those of you who know that Sarah's real name is not Jenny Burton but persistently think that "Jack Burton" is somehow her con man father's real name, or even his most frequently used alias, seriously...just stop. :)

.

* * *

.

Lengthy Note / Thesis Regarding _Casablanca_ (spoilers abound):

Casablanca is considered one of the greatest films of all time (or at least one of the most beloved) with good reason. Upon viewing it now, a more jaded person might consider it cliché without considering that impression is only because it has been copied in various aspects so much over the years.

As a film, the final product was shaped by Joseph Breen, chief and enforcer of the Production Code Administration (PCA) - which was replaced in 1968 by what we know as MPAA "ratings" - and I am ashamed to say I actually think the movie is better for it. Or at least more "accessible".

There are a lot of implicit elements that would be more than a little off-putting if made explicit. That is also why I have a mini-aneurism anytime I hear rumblings of a potential "remake". It wouldn't survive modern interpretation with any of its endearing qualities. (IMHO)

Breen was by many accounts not the greatest human being but his effect on this film is that the viewer can easily turn a blind eye to some of the sexual themes. But the story is also so well crafted that it is one of the few examples of "sex as a weapon" that is so well done that, if you choose to embrace it, you actually not only sympathize.

You understand.

Turn back now if you wish to maintain a more wholesome interpretation of Casablanca...

While you decide...For those who haven't seen it, the story revolves mostly around stolen "letters of transit". Not your ordinary MacGuffin (after all, "MacGuffins" are, by definition, meaningless and their exact nature unimportant to the plot so few MacGuffins actually are MacGuffins), these papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe. And, more importantly to the refugees stranded in Casablanca, travel to neutral Portugal then America, making them absolutely priceless.

You see, jaded American expatiate Rick Blaine runs a nightclub and underground gambling den in Casablanca. Once (apparently) a carefree, idealistic freedom fighter he now hides from the world in a bitter and somewhat debauched existence not caring about anyone or anything after the love of his life abandoned him without explanation when they were to meet on a train platform (sound familiar?) as Paris was about to fall to the German army. And via a most disreputable fellow, Rick has come into possession of the papers. They have fallen into the hands of the one man in Casablanca who has no desire to go anywhere.

His former lover - Ilsa Lund (someone asked where Sarah's Cabo alias came from and maybe this was my subconscious at work since I used the same surname) - arrives in his bar and begs for the papers for her husband (!) Victor Lazlo, a fugitive resistance leader.

(Last chance if you want to maintain your preferred position that a movie which _depicts_ no sex _contains_ no sex...ye be warned...)

Now...The fact that Rick and Ilsa had sex (warned you) when Ilsa believed her husband was dead was prevented from explicit mention but isn't THAT bad of an interpretation considering the circumstances (believing her husband was dead, its just sex out of wedlock). But in "present day" (December 1941) Casablanca, Ilsa desperately wants to save her husband, Victor, and, when surly Rick is uncooperative, Victor begs Rick to save his wife. Under any terms.

Each is willing to let the other go to save them.

Somewhat less clear and the subject of some debate is whether Ilsa later sleeps with Rick to convince him to help her husband, chooses to stay with Rick as some sort of payment, if he is her true desire and she does choose Rick over her husband or this is a ploy on her part (she loves her husband so much she will leave him to save him), whether Rick goes along with it for one last moment with her, etc. but making it explicit would have removed the viewer's ability to see whichever version they wanted to see. Honestly, none of the above interpretations weaken the story very much.

Deciding which of these interpretations makes the better story requires examining another side plot...

(Told you it was long...)

Where the implications of life in Casablanca get worse is the exploitation of the refugees and the character of Captain Louis Renault, the blatantly corrupt commander of the local police. If you are like me, upon first viewing and being entertained by his interactions with Rick you will find that you tend to LIKE Captain Renault. Hell,I STILL like him.

Probably because his favorite pastime is only extremely vaguely implied and easy to overlook: extorting sexual favors from female refugees.

The core story is fantastic but my favorite character and subplot revolve around this downplayed aspect I have come to consider _critical_ to the core story. If you know who to look for at the very beginning of the film you will see a female refugee named Annina Brandel wistfully watching an airplane leave Casablanca.

She's my favorite character in the film and I had to research her name. I don't think her name is ever actually spoken in the film and for the longest time I referred to her simply as "the Bulgarian Bride". I actually think the entire plot hinges on her because it is she who changes Rick's heart.

She and her husband of only eight weeks - who had spent time in a concentration camp after the Austria Anschluss - are attempting to flee Europe to America but, like most other refugees, they underestimated the cost of bribing their way to freedom. In their desperation, her husband is playing roulette (and losing badly) when the newlywed woman comes to Rick to discuss their other option which she has not discussed with her husband: if she sleeps with Captain Renault he will provide the exit visas they need to travel to America but cannot otherwise afford.

She does not seek Rick's advice about what she should do per se, but rather simply wants to know whether Renault will keep his word. She reveals that Captain Renault himself told her to ask Rick. Rick replies that "he always has" which tells the viewer what a common occurrence this is for good ole Louis. It's what the desperate woman intends to do with this knowledge that is equal parts heartrending and beautiful and deserves to be quoted directly:

* * *

Annina: "Oh, monsieur, you are a man. If someone loved you very much, so much that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, and she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her?"

Rick: "Nobody ever loved me that much."

Annina: "And he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart, that would be all right, wouldn't it?"

Rick: "You want my advice?...Go back to Bulgaria."

(from the film "_Casablanca_" (1942))

* * *

Rick leaves her utterly dejected and resigned to one of three miserable fates: return to war torn, corrupted Bulgaria, remain trapped and soon penniless in Casablanca or resign herself to do what she must to escape to America. Even though I've already spoiled the hell out of it, if you haven't seen the movie, you'll have to watch to see how it all turns out.

But the line "nobody ever loved me that much" and the parallels between Ilsa's attempts to save her husband and Annina's attempt to save her own adds incredible context to whether, in the "present day", Ilsa slept with Rick to save her husband... Sorry kids, although there is no one thing to point to, the preponderance of evidence makes it very hard to believe she did not.

The first clue is where the Hays Code comes back into play as Breen provided very specific instructions to remove the implication of a "sex affair" from the script to the finished product. But Breen retired before the finished film was completed, no special attention was paid to its production at the time (despite the notoriety it enjoys today) and the film instead employed subtle phallic symbology (the lighthouse) that was not specifically forbidden.

The second indication of their intentions is that the unproduced sequel written by the same screenwriter was said to include the premise that Ilsa and Victor raised a son he knew to be Rick's.

The third is less of a clue - as it comes long after the film - but rather an illustrative example of why it just makes a better story this way. In the 1998 novelization/sequel As Time Goes By when Ilsa's husband asks why Rick gave them the letters of transit when he could have kept them for himself...

* * *

"I'm sure I don't know," replied Ilsa. Her mind flashed back to the last time she had seen Rick alone, in his apartment above the cafe last night. She had been ready to sleep with him or shoot him, whatever it took to get the letters of transit that were her husband's passport to freedom.

She had not shot him."

(from the novel "_As Time Goes By_", by Michael Walsh)

* * *

This echoes my preferred interpretation that Rick's deduction of her true motives, despite her apparent willingness to stay with him (and the likelihood that she would have followed through with that for the rest of her life - saving one love and settling for the other), made Rick realize that, although their love was real, he wasn't the man she loved most. It makes his plane-side speech to her make much more sense to me.

Hopefully that enhances rather than ruins it for you. I think this is a rare case where a foul theme actually enhances a story.

.

* * *

.

Here in Undercover Lover, the lost love named Ilsa is about to marry a Russian mob boss and it turns out she's not only alive but also a spy. This is one of a handful of data points which forces us to consider that the CHUCK universe allows for at least some extreme seductions in some way because, of course, the question is: is there any plausible way that a spy, posing as girlfriend to a really nasty piece of work who likely would not take kindly to being put off by a woman, could somehow become engaged to that man and on the eve of their wedding, has not slept with him?

The show tries to soften the implications with Victor's ridiculous "I can't wait any longer". If you choose to believe that for some reason Victor is both so enamored with Ilsa that he not only foregoes all other more easily coerced women with whom he likely comes into contact and not only wants to marry her but also that a CRIME BOSS is willing to wait until until after the ceremony to consummate the relationship (rather than my head canon that she's just making him wait until after the ceremony in a recent arrangement out of disgust so near the end of her mission), then I respect your powers of self-delusion but you will have to forgive my opposite conclusion.

I am on record as saying that I do not accept the premise that a woman who wasn't already a sex worker and/or somehow completely indifferent to the idea would blithely accept such a mission so I require a better reason than "that's what spies do" (or the even more flippant, offensive and lazy French stereotype that some American productions employ and mentioned in the episode script by Casey - was Ilsa ALWAYS a French agent or is she Bosnian by birth (see below) but working for the French DGSE?).

Its bizarre enough that Ilsa went by the same name at the time of the bombing that "killed" her and when betrothed to her target (even if the two events were unrelated) but my opinion is that the final discussion between her and Casey implies that her name was NEVER Ilsa Trinchina and, "like all spies", she never shares her real name. As I said in the opening note, I avoided that interpretation even though I feel it is implied by canon.

Like the film that inspired the episode (seen playing in the media room when Ilsa comes to Casey), there are possible reasons that might drive a person to consider doing something she would ordinarily be far more likely to refuse and that she regards as repulsive. I tried to keep the basic premise and explore the trope a bit to both leverage it and highlight the absurdity of it being something the agent would be unaffected by or even do if she were in her right mind or uncoerced. Hopefully, I succeeded.

.

* * *

.

Where are they now: I was curious and according to the CHUCK Wiki, our Ilsa was born on Apr 26, 1974 in Sarajevo, Bosnia, same as Ivana Miličević, the actress who portrays her. However, Chuck's third flash on her (in Ilsa's hotel room) indicates a birthdate of Aug 25, 1978 and birthplace of Moscow. Instead of correcting what I had already written (never trust the internet) I utilized both.

If you are wondering what Ivana is up to, she is starring in the Cinemax original series _Banshee_ and I point this out because I absolutely did not recognize her with her lighter hair.

(Bonus Trivia: Ivana's brother, Tomo, is the guitarist for Thirty Seconds to Mars.)

On _Banshee_, Ivana plays the former lover and former criminal accomplice of Lucas Hood, the man now posing as the sheriff of the town of Banshee (don't ask me, I'm not sure how either), the daughter of a ruthless Ukrainian gangster they both stole something from for which Lucas served a fifteen year prison sentence and, under an assumed identity, a wife and mother of two.

I can't fully recommend the show because I have seen exactly one episode and haven't gotten around to checking out more, but that episode was AWESOME. It was the eighth episode of the first season (entitled "We Shall Live Forever") and, if you always appreciated the CHUCK fight choreography, featured a whatever-you-can-lay-your-hands-on literal fight to the death between Ivana's character and one of her father's henchmen with whom she has some history. The episode cut away occasionally to cover a few other plot lines but the fight lasted nearly the entire episode. It was amazing.


	27. XXVII: Creatures of the Underworld (3:3)

...wherein the fearless Agent begins to face the fears of a woman calling herself Sarah...

Canon Reference: Post-episode Episode 112 ("Undercover Lover") and an Interlude in its aftermath

Contents: Two chapters, 5K-ish and 7K-ish words; one a post-episode scene and another a Charah interlude (which was one of the first pieces of this story I "test wrote"); the final third of the "Undercover Lover" arc

A/N: Final story-only word count for these chapters around, associated with and driven by events of "Undercover Lover" is just over 30,000 words. I need to plan better!

Interesting to hear people's different interpretations and preferred versions of _Casablanca_. There are definitely at least two different stories being told depending on how the viewer fills in the blanks.

Another movie deconstruction in this one with another (shorter this time!) note about it in the end notes.

In chapter 82, I alternate between calling Sarah "Walker" and "Sarah". It's not arbitrary. It's based on the context but it may seem a little strange. I was as uncertain as Sarah herself in which of the two she saw herself in a few places.

.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied.

Additionally, no ownership or claim to _Casablanca_, _Blade Runner_, _Ben Hur, Scrubs_ or several movies (with a common topic that will be spelled out - all referred to by little more than name within the story) including Baz Luhrmann's _Moulin Rouge!_ from which the title of the super-arc made up of these past three installments comes and extensive references including MASSIVE spoilers for that movie within this installment, any Ani DiFranco songs (of course, again, I keep telling you she's that good), or any songs from _Moulin Rouge!_ including Elton John's _Your Song_ and the song _La Complainte de la Butte_ (both French version (see full attribution at the end of chapter 83) and - with apologies - a best guess / composite translation, wait for it before you do your own translation) is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXVII: Creatures of the Underworld (Part 3 of 3)

* * *

.

082: One Little Girl with One Little Gun

.

* * *

.

_"Tell me, who is your boogeyman?_

_That's who I will be_

_You don't have to like me for who I am_

_But we'll see what you're made of_

_by what you make of me"_

.

Ani DiFranco, _Willing to Fight_

.

* * *

.

Los Alamitos Army Airfield, Orange County, CA; Thursday, March 13, 2008, 12:30 pm

.

Ilsa smiled when she saw the woman she now knew to be Agent Sarah Walker sitting in the hanger. With her feet crossed and propped up on a makeshift table, fingers laced lazily across her stomach and watching Ilsa's approach disinterestedly through gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, Ilsa wasn't surprised in the least to see her here. Wasn't even surprised to see her in a uniform, almost certainly a disguise. She was, however, surprised to see her in an Australian RAAF uniform.

"Good Afternoon, Wing Commander..." Ilsa checked the Agent's name plate, "...Smith. Really?"

"I thought you'd appreciate that. Maybe he's my brother? And I'm moving up in the world. Wing Commander is, what? Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S.? Quite a move up the ranks since my last visit of any length to an airbase. It's good to see all my hard work is paying off."

"Australian?"

"Since you cancelled that second flight plan over the Pacific, I saw an opportunity."

"To do what?"

"I needed to procure something from your men. I made a bit of a ruckus as the uninformed, no-longer-needed trans-Pacific pilot before coordinating with your intel officer. They have the prisoners secured," Sarah gestured to a massive C-130 transport behind her, "and are waiting for you, by the way."

"And what was it you were going to procure?"

"Have procured. I can be very convincing," Agent Walker threw her sunglasses onto the table along with her sidearm, "Casey mentioned in our debrief that there might be a recording. Its a recording of you at the bar, you confronting Chuck and Casey in your room, what happened after they left and Federov woke up," Ilsa turned somewhat green at that recollection, "the conversation between you and Chuck at the Buy More, you and Casey and finally a talk between Chuck and Casey about you and me. There's nothing useful for your case and no one else needs to hear any of that."

"Have you listened to it?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"It was...eye opening." When Sarah had spoken to Chuck last night as the agencies they had called in and Ilsa's quickly assembled team detained many of Federov's colleagues and his discovery of the listening device came up. When she had pressed him, he admitted he was not 100% certain that his conversation with Casey hadn't been captured and that he didn't know the full extent of what Ilsa and Casey discussed. Agent Walker had decided to take care of retrieving any recordings personally.

"How so?" Ilsa asked.

"I think you should listen to it too before you leave."

Agent Walker had taken the hard drive and the disk copy, destroying the disk drive herself rather violently assisted by the concrete floor, after being quite convinced by the poor tech guy that there were no other copies when he was left alone while the tactical team loaded the prisoners. She had then revealed to Ilsa's team who she really represented and alternated between threatening to detain them all for an unauthorized action on US soil and threatening them with bodily harm. They had relented when she agreed that she wouldn't leave with any evidence until she cleared it with Ilsa.

Walker had brought a hand held player with her, a government version they considered state-of-the-art but was little more than a blockier Discman with a speaker and a digital time index. They couldn't all be home runs.

Walker began playback of the recording which was queued up to after Ilsa's final experience as Federov's fiancé, thankfully, when Ilsa had approached Chuck at the Buy More.

Ilsa listened with a smile at her exchange with Chuck, "he's very protective of Casey, isn't he?"

"We protect him and he protects us," Walker answered. She had been more affected by Chuck's wistful and veiled comment about how professional she was. As if that was the only reason she didn't make whatever feelings she might have for Chuck more apparent.

She was protecting him in a different way. From a doomed attempt at a relationship with someone as screwed up as her. And protecting herself, as she felt the later conversation on the recording revealed a need for. But the job of physical protection belonged to her and Casey.

Chuck was the better warden of their hearts. And their souls.

"You know he didn't mean that," Sarah offered at Ilsa's reaction to Casey's comments suggesting Ilsa should get used to being "plowed by a drunk Russian crime boss".

"I know," Ilsa said quietly.

Sarah didn't think she really did know.

"Why'd you say that? About Casey not doing something unprofessional?" Sarah asked once the exchange in the Buy More media room was over and only whatever movie was playing in the media room could be faintly heard.

"It seemed to be a strong personality trait based on what Chuck said out front. I was hoping to make a clean break."

Sarah just absorbed that knowledge and nodded, resisting the urge to ask the question she had lingered here waiting to ask the French spy: _Why?_

Instead she began fast-forwarding. "There's nothing of consequence until later," she said as she watched the time index tick forward on the display.

"I've often wondered what made Casey the sarcastic, angry, closed off person that he is. Just assumed he was built that way and just had a momentary lapse with you," Walker said as the recording fast-forwarded.

"I used to be like that," Walker continued, "Am like that. I've done a lot of the same things he's done. I tend to move about without much notice but occasionally a message needs to be sent. Pick ten incidents that stand out in your mind of any particularly violent or extremely efficient nature against a typical target of the US in the past five years and I'd be comfortable with you assuming that I was responsible for two of them. Casey gets at least one, maybe two for himself too. And when this assignment is done, I think everyone assumes I'll go back to being that person again. Ahh...here we go."

Ilsa barely had time to consider that Walker assumed that future for herself too before the blonde Agent restarted the playback with the suggestion, "Forgive Casey's petulance. He's pretty drunk."

Walker let the recording play. She had to turn up the volume all the way and, even then, the conversation was somewhat muffled but could be heard clearly. She watched Ilsa listen to the empty existence Casey's life had become without her. Or even someone else that he loved by his side.

Sarah listened more to the stereotypical American life Chuck envisioned for himself. Maybe Casey did think it sounded boring but Sarah could visualize it and it wasn't a dreary routine of box stores and ugly, underpowered family transport vehicles.

Not at all.

With Chuck living it, it was a rich, vibrant, glorious life full of love and laughter. With a loving husband and wife cheering on their son at little league, or their daughter playing soccer. Sarah always knew her imaginary daughter would play soccer.

Then it all came crashing down when Chuck happily said that, all of those things Casey didn't want, he would take them all. That it was his dream. Even though it would obviously be boring to a spy like Casey.

And by extension, to a spy like her.

Ilsa was watching Sarah now as Casey barked at Chuck to "cut Walker some slack" and ordered Chuck to shut up while he collected his thoughts on the matter.

"See," Walker said, "we protect each other."

As Casey began listing the bullet points of his own career in a vague way, Ilsa said, "I shouldn't be hearing-"

"My assessment," Walker interrupted, "is that you should."

Ilsa returned her attention to the recording just as Casey struggled with admitting that he still loved her. But then Ilsa had the same thought again, that she shouldn't be hearing this, when Casey began describing the woman next to her.

"A human weapon", Casey called her. And he wasn't wrong. Walker coughed loudly over Dr. Zarnow's name but otherwise did not censor the playback. Ilsa needed some context if she was to be of any use finding the answers she sought. Then they both listened to Casey's scarily accurate movie analogy meant to emphasize how young she likely was when Graham recruited her. He couldn't have known but he mostly figured it out anyway.

Agent Walker had been fifteen when she first met Graham, sixteen on the day she reported. She had never really considered it, preferring to lean on the notion that she had always been "mature for her age". And neither Casey nor Chuck had any idea of the life she had led prior to her recruitment. The sum of the parts created a whole of a story much closer to the idea of being recruited at birth than either of them realized.

Walker coughed over Bryce's name and the reference to Stanford but not when he was mentioned again later. After all the grief Casey had given her, Walker had been shocked to hear Casey defending her so-called relationship with Bryce to Chuck as the convenience that it ultimately was.

"Here's the interesting part," Walker interjected.

Ilsa had been listening in fascination. Whatever was next, she wasn't sure how it could be more interesting.

Ilsa and Agent Walker shared a look when the implication arose, at least in Chuck's mind given Casey's constant teasing when he was more sober, that what was going on between Sarah and Chuck in any way resembled what had been going on between Ilsa and Federov as part of her cover. Walker clarified to Ilsa by pointing to herself and saying simply, "Cover girlfriend."

Walker had again been surprised by Casey's insight that she was afraid to know what Chuck truly thought of her, good or bad. Her first concern had been that he would see her as the monster she was and, if that perception was real to Chuck, if that was what he considered to be the real her, there would be no escaping the reality of that being the truth of Sarah Walker. But lately, she had been just as concerned that he might actually be able to accept her for who she was. Who she had been and who she may yet become.

If he did, Casey was right again, Sarah had no idea how to proceed from there.

Walker watched Ilsa listen to Casey's assessment of why she might have actually married Federov. Far from his outburst about essentially becoming the Russian's sex toy from earlier, he expressed his respect for her sacrifice. Her judgment. Her assessment of what was at risk. That he had a right to hate it but maybe there was more good that could come from it than he could know. Or more bad from not doing it.

Unfortunately, Ilsa considered that Chuck was also right when he said somewhere in the middle of all that "she should have chose you." If only she had known Casey was still alive, she liked to think she would have.

There was the sound of a disturbed microphone, a light tapping on a hard surface and then, after a pause, two sharp bangs and no more.

Ilsa looked to Walker who answered the unasked question, "That's when Chuck found Federov's bug and destroyed it. His best guess is that the bug he left behind, the one you found, Federov somehow saw first. He left it right where it was, bugged your necklace while you slept and heard everything thereafter. It's a good theory. And Chuck is rarely wrong."

Ilsa thought she was going to be sick. If that was how it played out, it would have been just before Victor woke her up as insistent as he had been when he passed out drunk the night before.

Whenever a female agent made the choice, the choice that Casey had described, that there was no other way to either save their own life by protecting their cover or to avert some disaster that outweighed their disgust with the idea, to actually sleep with their enemy it was _their_ choice. The fact that they hated it, that they never would have allowed it otherwise, that the act itself was every bit the violation associated with more clear-cut rape had to be hidden from their target to achieve whatever good they had decided was more important than all of that.

Occasionally someone less enlightened would call an Agent who made such a choice a "whore". If so, they were whores who were paid in human lives. The lives of innocents who would never know their name or their sacrifice and never owe them anything other than living a life deserving of being saved.

It was never a choice meant to benefit to the Agent directly unless it was to save their own life. And any acceptance of sex with death as the alternative could only be considered rape. The fact that their rapist didn't know she was unwilling, didn't know that she despised him, that her affections and interest were false and that she wouldn't hesitate to kill him in his sleep if tactically advantageous, helped the Agent maintain some illusion of control.

This last time, Federov had known.

Ilsa had taken great pride in dismantling his criminal organization. In convincing herself she was saving lives. In convincing others of that truth so they would support her while she did what needed to be done. And it was true but all the while she knew, in the blackness of her heart, that all those good intentions were really just window dressing to allow her to exact her revenge.

She had been paid. And this final abuse by the man she had positioned herself to betray was enough to make her reconsider the choice she had made to decline that payment.

Walker handed her a bottle or water and only then did Ilsa realize that she had collapsed to her knees. Ilsa opened the bottle and took a sip as Walker sat cross-legged to join her on the hangar floor.

"What would you do," Ilsa asked quietly after a moment, "...if someone took _everything_ from you? Twice?" After another sip of water she asked the same question differently, "What wouldn't you do?"

Even when she had accepted Graham's terms to save her father Agent Walker hadn't truly known the cost. Hadn't known she would become a human weapon. Hadn't known she would face decisions like these on a regular basis. Hadn't known she had signed her life away. That simple, beautiful life full of joy and love that Chuck had described.

"I don't know. I've never loved anyone that much."

Walker was looking casually out onto the tarmac where another plane had just taxied out for takeoff when she said it but Ilsa remembered her from last night. After seeing Casey rise up out of the pool like some kind of force of nature with a deadpan, "I hope I'm not too late to object to this union", Ilsa had noticed the blonde woman pummeling one of Federov's men in a dark corner. The one who had stepped away to answer his phone during the ceremony.

Ilsa had put two and two together later. It wasn't his phone. Sarah had lured him away to find out what had become of its owner. She had dispatched him when its owner jumped into the pool with Casey. When the entire wedding party had pulled their guns on the two men, the incredibly adept and dangerous woman Casey had described on the recording had opted not to wait for a more tactically advantageous situation. She had pulled a single pistol on the entire group.

She now realized that Agent Walker had been assessing the spacing of the aisle between the two sides and her distance from them. Planning an attack rather than a retreat. Calculating the odds that if she threw herself in the middle, even a moderately intelligent gunman would realize he was more likely to hit one of his colleagues than his target. If she was as good as Casey implied, the first foolish shooters would have almost certainly missed their target even as Agent Walker dispatched many of them and the less loyal fled while the remaining men were deciding. That would leave even fewer men for Walker to deal with.

Luckily the loyalty of Federov's men was only as strong as his ability to pay and they had scattered. Many were scooped up by Ilsa's support team who had no knowledge of the actions of the American spy team. The others would be collected later. Neither Ilsa nor Federov had been aware of each other's intentions that their honeymoon flight would be their adversary's last flight. Ilsa was glad Casey had come to interrupt. There was no telling how her plan would have turned out otherwise.

Considering the ten extremely violent or extremely efficient confrontations Ilsa knew of that had come to mind when Walker had suggested such scenarios were indicative of her skills, Ilsa was certain that Walker could have dealt with many, if not most of them. Possibly, if she were very, very lucky in her dealings with death, all of them. Or at least enough for a decisive victory.

Part of Ilsa had wished she had witnessed it but had no desire for the scenario to have played out where she would have witnessed it. If one of Federov's men had killed Casey and Chuck the moment they got out of the pool, or if they had missed the pool, she had no doubt she would have witnessed it.

Walker likely wouldn't have survived but none of Federov's men would have realized unless _they_ survived until the end or fled that the blonde agent never truly considered herself to be at a tactical disadvantage. They didn't want to kill each other or be killed by each other. Without Casey or Chuck to protect, everyone present would have become her target. That would make her choices easy. Removed all fear. Victor Federov had no idea how inadequate his taunting assessment of the blonde Agent had been.

One little girl with one little gun, indeed.

Ilsa had been slightly mistaken when she told Casey that his partner must be either crazy or in love. But so had Casey when he said she wasn't crazy, knowing exactly what he was implying. Because Ilsa now saw the truth of it. Sarah Walker was a bit of both. But love, for once, was winning. Even though crazy had led her to kick the gun to a foreign agent she did not know. Because of all possible outcomes, the one that most likely ensured the survival of a gangly, kind-faced, good-hearted man named Chuck Bartowski, required a little bit of crazy.

And yet Sarah Walker still suffered under the delusion that she had never loved anyone as much as the Ilsa who had once loved Casey.

Sarah didn't know what to make of Ilsa's knowing smile and, when the French spy finally replied quietly, "I hope you do," based on what it had driven Ilsa to do, Sarah didn't know whether to consider it a blessing or a curse.

She still wasn't sure even when Ilsa clarified, "Despite everything, for however long you have it, I hope that you do."

.

* * *

.

Sarah helped Ilsa up and they both sat at the collapsable table Sarah had occupied when Ilsa arrived, Sarah putting her sunglasses back on, and they both processed what they had learned.

Sarah Walker was relieved. Graham had invested in new communications technology at the Weinerlicious and Beckman had installed some of her own in the Buy More media room. Sarah had been pleased by that development but even more so when Graham informed her that they were going to shut down the Weinerlicious soon and use the renovation construction - along with some "unforeseen" utility corrections - as a cover to build a bridge between the two. A state of the art underground base and new cover business. Complete with temporary living quarters should Chuck ever need to be held securely while any threats were assessed or dealt with.

Hearing that Graham was installing a permanent base of operations, Sarah inferred that Graham was considering this assignment a long-term one. It wasn't an ideal option - she would be responsible for a believable cover story to keep him hidden for the duration of any threat assessment should such a security problem occur - but it reduced the chances of him suddenly being removed completely.

Graham had kept Agent Walker so busy with so many outside missions that she had been unable to properly consider, much less execute, any contingency planning if Graham unexpectedly tried to remove Chuck from L.A. Hearing Casey's care and concern for both her and Chuck that was apparent on that recording gave her the reassurance she needed that Casey wouldn't pull the rug out from under them. At least not without giving them a chance.

The rest - like how to deal with Chuck's misguided impressions of her or his correct impressions of her for that matter - would have to wait until a more opportune time.

Ilsa considered what she had learned. That maybe Casey could conceivably forgive her for all the things she had done in memory of him. But what Ilsa had come to realize was that Casey forgiving her wasn't the problem.

"Chuck is rarely wrong," Sarah interrupted Ilsa's thoughts. "He originally identified you by name as the Ilsa that Casey knew in '04. But he later identified you as a slightly different Ilsa. A French spy. He's trying to reconcile the two and I haven't even told him about your comments to Casey about hunting Federov as early as '02. I haven't shared my theory with him yet."

"Which is?"

"That you were always Ilsa. Always a French spy. Because he told me something else interesting. Something he overheard when you were leaving Casey's place. He said you implied that Ilsa was never your real name. Chuck and I are both pretty certain that is not true. I dug a little on my own and know that there was another fiancé a long time ago, long before you met Casey."

"Why is this important to you? Or to him?" Ilsa asked, trying to redirect the conversation from those hurtful memories.

"Him? Its a puzzle. Its not just curiosity, its the kind of thing we rely on him for. He doesn't like to be wrong because that implies he is not as valuable as our superiors believe."

"Ahh..." Ilsa said considering that was also why it was important to Agent Walker but disguised her reaction as simple acknowledgement. "So why is it important to you?"

"We'll get to that. Why tell Casey that you are going to become someone else? That you were never the Ilsa he knew? Why run away?"

"It's funny that we both call him Casey," Ilsa stalled, "I can't believe he used his last name as a first name. Idiot," she said while smiling and Sarah indulged her stalling before she continued, "And now he thinks my name's not really Ilsa. That nothing was real."

"But it was."

Ilsa nodded.

"It's why I did this," Ilsa said. "What Federov took from me - what I thought he took from me - he took from thousands of others. I was just in a position to do something about it."

"I said I didn't know what I would do if someone took that much from me. But I can imagine," Sarah answered, "I've done worse for less. Besides giving me an opportunity to wear this nifty uniform and barge in here as a disgruntled pilot, I figured out what you intended to do when you cancelled that second flight."

"I had a nice little torture and execution site all set up for my ex-fiancée," Ilsa said without shame and coming as no surprise to Walker.

"And now?"

"Casey's alive," Ilsa said simply, "Would it sound stupid - just seeing him alive - would it be ridiculous after all I've done to say that he took the gun out of my hand?"

Sarah considered her for a moment before answering. "No. That wouldn't be stupid at all."

They were both quiet for a few moments more before Sarah spoke again. "So why not stay? Or, if you can't stay right now at least let him find you?"

"How can I face him after what I've done? What I've become?"

"He knows the horrors of this world. He would understand. He said as much on that recording," Sarah offered.

It was Ilsa's turn to consider her blonde American counterpart. What Sarah Walker may have done in her career and what Casey had said about her. Sarah Walker's interest in Ilsa's story suddenly became very clear.

"I think I know why this is important to you. Your field support, Chuck? Is he asking questions?"

Sarah could refuse to answer that but Ilsa had been forthcoming with her so far. She was trying to understand some things and this was the price of admission. She looked away as she answered.

"No. Not for a while now. But...on that recording, I can tell what he's thinking. He's seen me seduce men as part of a mission. Nothing extreme but...it hurts him. And considering what you were prepared to do..."

"You're afraid that he'll ask you if you've done such a thing."

"I haven't. At least nothing extreme. I would only consider it in the extreme situations that Casey touched on. That's always been my position. I've just been very fortunate in that regard."

"Well then, better to be asked if you would do such a thing and explaining it that way - as a hypothetical - than being asked if you _have_ done that...when you have."

"Even that doesn't leave me untainted. I've made my own luck from time to time in ways that are just as foul."

"I've done my share of that too. Not to the degree you seem to be thinking or what you and Casey have implied. I understand your ledger may be weighted far more heavily in that area than I can imagine," Ilsa said.

"Are you afraid-" Sarah began then restarted, "Are you afraid he'll decide one day that he just can't look at you once he sees what you truly are?"

It was then that Ilsa saw exactly what Casey was talking about when discussing Walker with Chuck. The human weapon who couldn't understand a certain young man's world or even his affection for her. The grown woman who never had a chance to truly grow into adulthood. The woman who needed assurances that Ilsa was unable to give her.

"No," Ilsa answered confidently, "Casey already made it very clear - and I believe him when he says it - that he didn't think I was repulsive for what I have done."

"Then why are you leaving? Why make that clean break?"

"Because _I_ do!" Ilsa snapped.

"You misunderstand me, Sarah," Ilsa continued more calmly, "I don't doubt that he could live with what I've done. Its not him who isn't able to look at the repulsive thing I've become. Its me.

"I told him I'm going undercover - and in a way I suppose I am. I'm going to disappear for... I don't know how long. Until I come to terms with all the horrible things I've done. Things I've done not for any greater good or for any one else's notion of justice but for my own revenge.

"Ilsa Trinchina buried pieces of a fiancé and less than that of a lover named Casey. Ilsa is quite done with the world and the world has no more use for Ilsa. I _need_ to be somebody else. And I can't be somebody else - or even the Ilsa he knew - _with_ him. I never suspected he was a spy but I think I knew the real him. Its me who can't live with me. Its time to lay Ilsa to rest."

Sarah looked completely blank, devoid of hope, so Ilsa offered her what glimmer she could even if she didn't truly believe it.

"You need to stop worrying about what he might think of you and start coming to terms with what you think of yourself. Until you do, what he thinks doesn't matter. Not yet anyway. At least you don't have to compete with the ghost of yourself knowing you can never be that woman again. You only have to consider what you want to be. If you can start seeing in yourself what he sees in you...things might be easier than you think."

Sarah considered that for a moment. At least she had every indication that neither Beckman nor Graham had imminent plans to remove Chuck from his world. And every indication that Casey was firmly on their side. She finally felt like she could breathe and maybe she could start thinking about how to be that woman that Chuck saw in her.

"Who will you be?" Sarah finally asked. Having been a hundred or more different people but always a spy - or an underage con artist - Sarah was genuinely curious.

"I don't know yet. But, hopefully? Someone capable of happiness," Ilsa stood to leave. To begin her attempt to become someone who could look at herself in a mirror. "Casey's a good man. Please take care of him. Take care of him for me?"

"Of course, I will," Sarah responded without hesitation, feeling like Casey would do the same for her. "He's my partner."

.

* * *

.

083: A Very Strange, Enchanted Boy and The Princess of the Streets

.

* * *

.

"There is no other way.

The show must go on.

We are creatures of the underworld.

We can't afford to love."

.

Harold Zidler, _Moulin Rouge!_

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Burbank, CA; Saturday, March 15, 8:00 pm

.

Ellie wanted to kick herself for even thinking it. For letting Devon put the stupid idea in her head. For allowing herself to let it linger there when it had just been part of a nonsensical game her mother taught her as a child when Ellie asked why her mother was watching everyone around them so intently and was told by her mother that it was just a game she liked to play.

It was a ridiculous notion, really.

Somehow even more ridiculous than her own counter-proposal as part of the same silly game that her brother's girlfriend was some sort of government agent. That argument had been deliberately ludicrous despite her attempt to fill in the narrative in an attempt to one-up Devon with an even more ridiculous idea.

But although Devon's theory was equally absurd, the clues he cited were undeniably there. They were piling up and remained unresolved. Ellie's own doubts were too persistent even though Sarah was too smart. Too self assured. Too strong. Too beautiful - which logically speaking seemed like an argument in the opposite direction but not the way Ellie saw it.

There was just no way Sarah was a call girl.

But the car, the hotel, the odd hours, overhearing Chuck reassuring Morgan it was not Sarah that Morgan saw on a yacht with a strange man late last year... It was a possibility she wanted to explore and understand. Hopefully one she could rule out but, if not, it would explain a lot about the woman's relationship with her brother.

Ellie had already steeled herself against the possibility but surprisingly wasn't horrified by it. It wasn't the worst thing in the world unless it was keeping the two of them from being happy together. She herself had at least seen enough to know that 'working my way through medical school' wasn't always a fiction reserved for those bragging, fake sounding letters Margaret Benitez had shown her in junior high school in a magazine the other girl had swiped from her father's closet.

She also knew from the experiences shared by some of the women she had worked with at that awful place that while the overwhelming majority felt they had no choice, a few particularly damaged girls actually enjoyed what they called "the thrill". Ellie hoped, if it were true, that Sarah wasn't one of the latter. That would be really hard on Chuck. Not that it wouldn't be hard on him either way but if Sarah wanted to, and was trying to, get away from that kind of life it would be a different story.

Devon had jokingly said it once before but it wasn't until he concocted a complete narrative around the idea as part of their silly game that Ellie even allowed her mind to pursue the thought. Suddenly Ellie could see the story Devon had invented play out in front of her. She could now conceive a scenario that actually made some sense.

The biggest inconsistency in Devon's theory when he first mentioned it had always been Sarah working at the Weinerlicious. Ellie could never figure out why, if Sarah were making enough money at some fictional 'night job' to pay for that car and that hotel, she would also be working a food service job in the daytime.

But Ellie also understood taking the job that paid enough during the hours she was available to work. That was why, with a packed school schedule, Ellie had worked at that sleazy place, the one that didn't care about her being slightly underage and was three bus transfers away in hopes no one she knew would ever see her, during her senior year of undergrad just to keep her and Chuck together until he started college. He would be eighteen after his first year and he could always transfer to Stanford later once his financial aid application didn't put them on the wrong people's radar.

She knew, even then, that there was something unhealthily obsessive about her need to keep the two of them together. A half a dozen moves to stay clear of Child Services and sharing shitty garage apartments made that clear. She had managed to scrape together enough for a few counseling sessions for Chuck when he needed it but hadn't realized how unhealthy her own obsession had been until a few therapy sessions for herself years later. But it was one of the last things she said to her father. She had promised to protect her little brother. And she thought if she could just get him to college, get him started without subjecting him to the hardships from which she had tried so hard to insulate him, she would have kept her promise.

Chuck was working at the Buy More and saving every penny for Stanford; a dream they likely couldn't afford. At least not for the first year. Ellie had worked at a local hospital gift shop where she could between classes - not able to afford to volunteer as a candy striper - and various retail and waitressing jobs in the evenings. Whatever maximized her take home pay by working around her school schedule best.

Chuck was never very sure of where she was working, just that he was to have Morgan out of their place and be in bed by the time she got home. She was careful to change and remove her stage makeup and he just assumed she went out after work on the occasions when he saw her come in.

A couple of girls she waited on who were wearing very expensive shoes and comparing notes on their tips for the evening put her onto the idea and, at first, she insisted on working as a waitress only. The tips were still pretty good and the pawing never got out of control. Then, when money got really tight, the answer was just a few feet and four stairs away and she ventured onto the stage. Chuck never knew and she preferred to keep it that way.

She had never taken those unthinkable offers to make the "real money" from those customers looking for a different kind of entertainment but there had been offers. Outrageous offers. Ellie understood desperation and she understood the temptation. And she had witnessed what a slippery slope that could be.

If Sarah had somehow fallen into that sort of life, she knew there was a story behind it. One similar to her own that just hadn't turned out as well. And Ellie knew she had no right to criticize someone whose luck had just been the tiniest bit worse than her own. Enough to push Sarah down the slope Ellie had managed to avoid through dumb luck. If Sarah was trying to determine whether she and Chuck could survive on the paychecks from their regular jobs it put things in a new light.

Chuck had often lamented that a guy making $11 an hour and living with his sister wasn't good enough for Sarah. Maybe that was the reason for some of their rough patches and that early, ill-conceived breakup. If each didn't think they were good enough for the other - Sarah because she was a high-end hooker and was ashamed of her past and Chuck because he felt he couldn't live up to the lavish lifestyle to which she was accustomed - it would explain a lot.

Ellie didn't think Sarah was that shallow but she had no way of really knowing why she wouldn't break away from such a life. She didn't want to continue to speculate wildly but now she had a hypothesis to test.

Now she could set up her experiment.

.

* * *

.

Ellie thought her choice of movie might have been too gimmicky for her purposes but _Pretty Woman_ was too cutesy.

_Taxi Driver_ or _Leaving Las Vegas_? Too dark and not enough emphasis on prostitution although significant to the plot.

_Belle de Jour_? Besides not being a believable choice as something she thought the boys might like it was too obvious and way too dark. Especially considering that she didn't know where Chuck and Sarah stood on their own physical intimacy. And potentially cruel depending on what skeletons and old hurts could be unearthed.

Ellie finally settled on a movie that might be slightly cruel in places depending upon how seriously they took it but could also be easily disguised as light fare. One that should give her the data she needed to test her hypothesis. It had the added benefit of being able to explain it away as a 'chick flick' choice which would cause Chuck and Devon to grumble but not invite further scrutiny.

And so, Chuck found himself sitting on his sister's couch with the object of his mostly unrequited affection lying next to him with her head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her as they were subjected to Ellie's musical movie choice for the evening: _Moulin Rouge!_

Little did Ellie (or Chuck for that matter) expect that the showy production and sweeping orchestrations would hold the attention of a part of Sarah that she had managed to hide even from Chuck and that Sarah had suppressed for years.

Ellie watched as Sarah looked on with rapt attention from the moment she entered the room to the opening lines sung about a very strange, enchanted boy and literally clung to her brother for the entire movie.

Chuck and Sarah had dawdled in the kitchen for a few moments joking about something and carried their drinks and popcorn into the living room just after the movie had started as the opening lyrics _"There was a boy..."_ were sung. They were still joking, about Chuck being a "very strange enchanted boy" as they had just heard, and while they were getting settled they missed a bit of the opening dialogue interspersed with the lyrics.

Ellie knew they had missed an important bit of foreshadowing whispered by the male lead but didn't feel the need to provide that detail. There would be plenty more clues and it might elicit an interesting reaction later.

They had settled into their typical movie watching pose just as she and Devon had - Chuck sitting slouched in the left corner of the couch; Sarah lying with her head on his shoulder or his chest. Chuck's right arm was draped across her waist, high on her torso but not inappropriately so. And it was that arm that Sarah held in a death grip for most of the movie. Her arm squeezing his arm giving him little choice but to hug her tightly.

Her left arm was pinned between them but the hand was free and was almost always holding one of Chuck's hands in one way or another; sometimes his left, across his body, with their fingers interlaced, sometimes clutching the back of his right hand with the webs between their index finger and thumb fitted together in a sort of backwards handshake and sometimes with her fingers circled around his wrist when she pulled his arm against her particularly tightly.

Sarah would say it was good for the cover - and Chuck was sure that's all there was to it - had she been at all aware that she was doing it.

Ellie missed none of this.

Ellie watched for clues in Sarah's reactions as subtly as she could. Sarah smiled broadly as they were introduced to the characters of the movie and Christian's obsession with finding a great love.

Sarah's early comment of "Hey, Obi-Wan Kenobi's in this" earned her a tiny bit of nerd cred and, more importantly, a kiss on the top of her head. Ellie saw Chuck linger a moment to enjoy the scent of her hair.

Ellie smiled when she saw Sarah sneak a peek at Chuck who, despite his earlier protestations, was watching intently through the kaleidoscope of color and motion and anachronistic music of the first twenty minutes or so.

When Christian sang that Elton John song to Satine to win her over, and it reached the bit about forgetting something Ellie had always found to be an odd thing to forget, Sarah smiled the way she often did - the way that made Ellie so certain the woman was madly in love with her brother - when he whispered to Sarah, "Blue. I could never forget how incredibly blue they are."

As Satine sang about one day leaving her life at the Moulin Rouge behind she spied Chuck absently stroking Sarah's hair and Sarah mimicking the action with her fingertips stroking his leg.

When Satine explained to Christian that its her job to make men believe what they want to believe, Chuck visibly gulped as Sarah shut her eyes.

Hard.

When Satine told Christian she had to sleep with the Duke on opening night and that the jealousy would drive him mad, Ellie watched as they just held each other even more tightly than before.

The tango scene was Ellie's best hope for a clear indication of whether her brother and his girlfriend had wrestled this particular demon. She was disappointed to see Chuck swallow hard and reach for his drink.

And Sarah clutched him tightly and her eyes seemed too be unfocused, as though she was no longer watching. Ellie could tell she was still listening but appeared to be deep in thought.

Sarah did not look up at Chuck.

She was glad that Sarah didn't cringe at the attempted rape scene although she did look extremely angry and Ellie thought she heard her mutter something indistinct but murderous so she wasn't entirely sure they had sidestepped that particular land mine.

And later Sarah actually gasped when Christian threw money at her feet and called Satine a whore.

Sarah's smile was starting to return during the big finish - hopes of a happy ending overcoming the foreshadowing thus far - but then Sarah gasped again when Satine suddenly succumbed to her illness.

.

* * *

.

They had risen to their feet and were silently clearing the debris from their snacks and beverages. Sarah was glassy eyed and made a small sniffling sound. She blotted at her eye with the heel of her hand and said accusingly to Ellie, "You should have warned me. I knew she was sick but I just assumed it would be years and years later. I know they kept hinting at what was coming..."

Devon, completely missing the point, tried to chime in to explain that tuberculosis - or as the film called it in the vernacular of the time, consumption - was pretty much a death sentence in the early 20th century but Sarah pressed on "...it's just so unfair. They should have had a lifetime together not just those few moments of happiness."

Then Chuck stopped Sarah in her tracks - stopped her rambling, stopped her sniffling.

Stopped her heart.

"Ahh...but that's the point, isn't it? Is love worth the pain if those few moments are all you get?"

Sarah stared at Chuck in a way she had never stared at him before. Chuck stared back despite being somewhat unsettled by her sudden silence.

Just a few days ago she had challenged a mob of armed men, armed herself with a single pistol and one hidden knife if she got in close enough to do what she was infamous for doing. In that moment she, the ultimate survivor, didn't care about dying. She only cared about keeping him safe. And to do so she would have killed them all.

Sarah then thought of the kiss at the docks months ago. It was just a kiss. And it was so much more. If they never had another moment like that, it would be enough.

It was meant to be her last act on Earth. Options were limited in that warehouse but given an infinite number of additional possibilities she was now certain she would have chosen to do the exact same thing over anything else.

Anything at all.

"Loved and lost and all that?" she finally asked Chuck.

"Yeah."

"I honestly don't know."

They were both quiet for a moment. It was an honest answer and that was all Chuck ever asked of her. And to be fair, he wasn't sure either.

"Sarah, do you have your iPod with you?"

She smiled as Chuck found a way to break the uncomfortable silence and she reached for her purse to pull out the red iPod Chuck had given to her what seemed like ages ago. She was a little leery of him seeing what she had added since he stopped doing this, sending unanswerable love letters via song, but she figured he would stick to his shadow menu he had specially programmed for her. The one she had left unchanged.

Chuck smiled and took the iPod with him to his bedroom. She knew immediately that he intended to load songs from the movie as part of her now resumed music education.

Ellie was leaning toward calling the experiment a success even though the exact outcome was uncertain. There was some sort of barrier between Sarah and Chuck's happiness and she just wished she could help Sarah see that it wasn't insurmountable.

But Ellie couldn't help one more probing question, "One of the nurses at work refused to believe me when I said Satine was a prostitute. She informed me that the movie was very clear that she was a 'courtesan'," and she and Sarah shared a laugh at the unnamed nurse's limited vocabulary.

Ellie continued to test her hypothesis, "I just couldn't fathom having to sell yourself to survive. Or how hard it would be falling in love and wondering it he could accept your past."

Sarah was still contemplating Chuck's question. Was it worth all that pain - pain like Ilsa had shown her - for a few glorious moments? If people only dared to love each other if a lifetime of happiness was guaranteed then no one would dare because nothing was certain.

She also remembered how angry she had been at Chuck months ago due to his jealousy over Bryce but he wouldn't be jealous if he didn't care for her. He wouldn't be insanely jealous if he didn't...care for her greatly.

She still wasn't sure she could muster that kind of emotion for anyone. At least not in a way to be worthy of his affection in return. She wasn't ready. But she did still feel horrible for her cold treatment of him afterward, especially in conjunction with her seduction of Lon Kirk. It must have seemed like she was trying to make him even more jealous in the cruelest way possible and they had never really talked about it.

Sarah was staring down the hallway at the doorway to his bedroom, thinking all this as Ellie asked her question. Ellie was actually starting to wonder if Devon had stumbled onto Sarah's secret and the explanation of why things were always so 'complicated' between Sarah and Chuck.

Sarah considered the question and suppressed her smile when she realized what Ellie was trying to do and decided to mess with Chuck's sister a little bit saying, "Well, back then options for women who didn't want to just be married off were pretty limited. I'm sure some did it to survive and some did it just to be their own person."

Ellie's response was a shock to Sarah.

"We all have skeletons in our closet, Sarah. I did what I had to do to keep Chuck and I together after Dad left and I'm not proud of all of it. I'll tell you about it sometime. But I guess the important thing would be for that woman to know that someone she fell in love with - and the people who cared about his happiness - didn't care how she came into their lives as long as they found a way to avoid hurting each other."

Sarah was shocked in more ways than one.

Had Eleanor Faye Bartowski seriously just told her that, on the off chance that she _was_ a prostitute of some kind, that was OK with her as long as she and Chuck were happy?

Sarah should have been more careful. Shouldn't have played around with Ellie's wild guesswork. But she was also secretly elated that, just as she had been starting to realize that Chuck might be able to accept her past, and even though she was way off the mark regarding the nature of her past, his sister had signaled that she would be inclined to do the same.

Ellie had been able to get through to the unfiltered woman beneath the Agent for just a moment and in that moment Sarah thwarted Ellie's experiment.

"People will do a lot of things to survive Ellie," Sarah said, "But there are just some things you don't do to someone who cares about you like that. Not if there's any other way."

Ellie took this as proof that Devon's theory had been disproven despite some puzzling, inconclusive indicators.

Ellie didn't know that this comment from Sarah was something that Sarah, properly considering it for the first time, had just figured out for herself.

.

* * *

.

Chuck was walking Sarah out to her car. She had claimed she had an early morning to avoid sleeping over with so many strange thoughts rattling around inside her head. Sarah stopped in front of the fountain in the courtyard and turned to face him. She didn't immediately speak so Chuck started the conversation. "So...good movie?"

"Yeah," Sarah bit her lip in that way that Chuck secretly adored not sure how to say what she wanted to say, "Yeah, sad but good. Its _La Traviata_, you know?"

"Its what?"

"_La Traviata_. With a bit of the Orpheus myth - man who could charm anyone with song? - bit of that thrown in."

"What's _La Traviata_?"

"Ah, Mr. Bartowski...we'll have to work on your musical education," she teased. "Its an opera. About a courtesan - such a pleasant word - who, same type of thing, falls in love, lies to him to drive him away. To save him... from a duel, I think... I only got to see bits and pieces. Hear them, actually. It was while I was on an assignment."

"But you liked what you saw? Err...heard?"

Sarah recalled casing the opera house as part of a Secret Service detail while disguising her intentions of assassinating a foreign dignitary at a later performance. She had paused often, pretending to be examining something closely but instead listening intently to the Italian lyrics during rehearsals.

"Yeah, it was nice."

"Maybe- Maybe if they ever perform it around here, maybe we could go...you know..."

_Please don't say it, please don't say it_ she was thinking as she expected him to say the words she herself had said too many times.

But he didn't say "for the cover" but rather trailed off without finishing the thought.

"Maybe we could," she answered, "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

She had a lot on her mind and she had decided that he deserved to hear at least some of it so she took a deep breath and dove in.

"Chuck, there are things I've done that we've never really talked about...like, I get why you didn't want me on Kirk's yacht last year. I do. At least I do now. I was mad at you for some of the things you said about me after Bryce showed up. It was petty of me. I know now that you trust my judgment. And I know you just don't like the fact that any woman would be put in that situation. I know you hate it.

"Its just- Its...unfamiliar for me. No one has ever worried about how I've felt about those kind of things, Chuck. I've been an Agent for a very, very long time. And I've done what I had to do to stay alive. I've done... questionable things. So many questionable things..."

She had trailed off and gotten a bit glassy eyed so he put a finger under her chin until her eyes rose to meet his. The beautiful impossibly Caribbean-blue eyes he could never, ever mistake for green.

He knew many of the questionable things she had done and could guess that there were many more even though he didn't have the specifics. The context was all wrong - and they hadn't watched that movie yet - so he didn't respond with his initial thought that he was certain that whatever questionable things she had done, she had also done extraordinary things.

Instead he said, "I've seen how capable you are, Sarah. I've seen a little and I can guess at some more. But those things...they don't define you. You're more than that. You're far too hard on yourself."

"You don't know, Chuck. You can't know. Maybe I'm not hard enough on myself. Did you ever think of that? But at least with the Kirk thing, despite what Graham and Beckman said I was only there to case the yacht for potential hiding places or areas he reacted negatively to me gravitating toward. Not exactly a Geiger counter but...I can read people pretty well. I would have suddenly remembered an important appointment and made my apologies like I did after the raid.

"And you must have seen when you were there, Casey had me covered. We always try to be well covered. If they had tried to take the yacht out, the harbor master was set to block them to straighten out some botched paperwork and I would have made my excuses then. Ilsa... She had her reasons. But I would never go into a situation with that type of approach unless I really thought I could stop Armageddon or something.

"When I use what men seem to think of me to gain an advantage, it's foul and I hate it and it only looks like I don't hate it because I'm so good at making it look like I don't. You have to be good at that or you die. And I always said I would never let things go too far. But I've seen things... really horrible things... happen to agents in desperate situations.

"We're trained for that - well, not for _that_ that - we're not courtesans but we're trained... if things go south, if absolutely nothing goes right, if even _flinching_ in carrying out your cover means you die, then you- Well... you don't flinch."

Chuck let that sink in for a minute. Sarah had covered a lot of ground. Said a lot of things she didn't have to say

"I'm not judging you, you know? I just... I just don't think you should have to do that. Any of that."

"I agree. But I don't think any less of Agents who think they are facing overwhelming odds and make a horrible choice. But I know some of them think less of themselves. And, I won't make you ask, I've never been in that situation. I got skills," she said cockily and elicited a smile from Chuck, "But I also want you to know, I've been very, very lucky. And willing to do other things to save myself from certain situations before they became inescapable. Those... those are the things that keep me up at night."

Sarah hadn't expected to share quite so much. She also hadn't expected Chuck to grab her by the shoulders gently and hold her comfortingly until she looked up at him. And she hadn't expected him to say what he said.

"What can I do to help?"

_Sweet, sweet man_, she thought and smiled as she did so before responding.

"Nothing. I mean you're already doing it. Letting me work it out. I need to learn to live with it."

Ultimately, she was the only one who really _had_ to. If she somehow found her way back to him someday, and he foolishly waited for her to do so, that was a problem for then.

"You don't have to do that alone, you know?... If you don't want to."

"I know. But for now just... Don't treat me any differently. You're an exceedingly kind person, Chuck, and I appreciate that you want to help. But I just wanted you to know that, what you're doing? Deliberately NOT helping when I know you desperately want to? That's exactly what I need right now."

"Can I ask? What brought this on?"

She considered mentioning her discussion with Ilsa but didn't want to belabor that point even though her ultimate response wasn't much better.

"Your sister thinks I'm a hooker."

"What?!"

Sarah grinned at the absurdity of it. "She thinks I'm a prostitute of some kind but wanted me to know that she's OK with that as long as we're happy."

"Wow," Chuck reacted with thoughtful disbelief, "that's... an incredibly misguided but strangely reassuring endorsement."

"I know, right? You Bartowskis are pretty special people."

"Should I set her straight?"

"Oh god no! Leave it alone. But maybe I'll spend more evenings here when I can. Try not to leave room for Ellie to think I have somewhere to be in the middle of the night. She can figure it out from there."

Chuck was a little surprised that they were both smiling at each other considering Sarah's assessment of Ellie's thought process. And he knew that had been a lot of sharing for Sarah - and as much as he appreciated it he wanted to let her off the hook for now - restore some normalcy - so Chuck handed her iPod to her.

"I snagged the soundtrack from the movie and put it on there. Let me know if you want me to link it so it plays as one piece. If you use shuffle it'll grab any of the tracks. I queued up my favorite one for you. The one I think is most 'you'."

She reached out and accepted it from him but she was still lost in thought as she turned to leave.

"Sarah?" She had reached the archway separating the courtyard from the street but turned back to look at him.

"I do hate it," he started, "I don't have the words to say how much I hate it. But if you ever had to do something like that to survive - or any other horrible thing to survive, anything at all - if it means you stay alive... well, I want you to know, I'd much rather you stay alive.

"And all those questionable things? I don't need to know the details. They brought you here. Brought you to me. And I'll be forever grateful for that. So I guess even though I don't really understand... I still understand."

She should have known all along that it wasn't Chuck who she had to worry about thinking the worst of her. Sex or killing - whatever the unsavory nature of her past - Ilsa had shown her exactly who needed to come to terms with that past.

Sarah walked back over to Chuck, stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek before smiling at him and turning to go.

She didn't trust herself to speak.

.

* * *

.

When she pulled away with her iPod plugged into the auxiliary jack on her stereo, she pressed play without looking to see where Chuck had left it queued up. She wasn't sure what she expected to hear but the one about blue eyes and green eyes was at the front of her mind.

When she instead heard the beginning of _One Day I'll Fly Away_ it took everything she had not to turn the car around.

It was a short drive at this time of the night and she skipped the music that hadn't been prominently featured in the movie. The song - or blend of two songs - from the tango scene was playing when she reached the hotel. She switched to her earbuds mid-song and her mind played back to three months ago on the yacht when her own motives had been unclear to her.

Had she tried to cruelly...do what? Make him jealous? Get back at him for the things he had said about her and Bryce? Push him away by showing him a horrific aspect of her life as a spy even though it wasn't the way she tended to approach a problem? Make him face the possibility of one of those questionable things she had mentioned earlier just to see how he reacted?

They were no closer to really being in anything more than a cover relationship. Nothing had changed. Yet so much had changed.

She honestly had no idea what she had been thinking back then but her discussion with Ilsa had made her see that she had been trying to hide her own self-loathing by forcing Chuck to find her as repulsive as she was convinced he eventually would. When he inevitably did, she could just deal with it and move on.

Now, considering herself as the problem left the problem of Chuck's perception of her for another time and she hated leaving things unfinished. But Ilsa was right. He wasn't going to make this easy for her by turning his back on her. It was a problem that had been years in the making and would take some time to deal with. The only person who had to find a way to face her... was her.

The two competing songs of the tango scene were intensifying in her ears. She had pictured Chuck as Christian as they had watched this scene earlier. And even though it was months ago, she thought of how much it must have hurt him to see her with another man even as an assignment. And the thought that wouldn't leave her mind throughout the movie, could Chuck possibly love her as much as Christian loved Satine?

Was she his 'Sparkling Diamond'?

Then, as she was riding up in the elevator, a song started to play in her ear-buds. A simple piano part that she didn't recognize from the movie followed by lyrics sung in French.

As she stepped out of the elevator she checked the display. _Complainte de la Butte._ It was indeed from the soundtrack, just apparently not featured prominently if it appeared in the finished film at all. The earlier association to the character from the movie persisted and she thought of Chuck trying to sing to her in French. That alone was an amusing thought. He swore he knew some Spanish but she had heard him try to use it conversationally and had no choice but to disagree.

But it was an agreeable fantasy so she jumped back to the beginning of the song and paid more attention to the French lyrics as she stepped off the elevator.

_La lune, trop bleme, pose un diadème sur tes cheveux roux._

_La lune, trop rousse, de gloire éclabousse ton jupon plein de trous._

She chuckled at the mention of red hair as she let herself in to her room. But the mention of tattered clothes brought back unpleasant memories of less fortunate cons, ill-fitting clothes and an empty belly as she closed and locked the door and walked toward the bed.

_La lune, trop pâle, caresse l'opale de tes yeux blasés._

Her pace slowed at the mention of her "indifferent eyes". She thought how hard it was to keep him at arms length. Chuck really had enough to worry about being involved in this life as much as he was. No matter how much she cared for him or how much he volunteered for the job he didn't deserve to be subjected to her baggage.

Then she froze in the middle of the room when she heard the next line - spoken as though by someone who actually knew her twelve year old self - or by the old man who once enjoyed calling her the same thing in Russian rather than French when she was twelve - and she let her purse strap drop from her shoulder to her hand.

If Chuck had sung this to her earlier tonight she was relatively sure she would have dragged him to his bed.

_Princesse de la rue, sois la bienvenue dans mon coeur brisé._

.

* * *

.

The next day she went up to pick him up at his apartment. Ellie let her in and she knocked lightly on his bedroom door and announced herself, "Chuck? Its Sarah."

He called to her to come in and she found him sitting at his computer. He spun around to face her and rolled toward her a bit.

She didn't know what to say so she kept it simple, "I never said 'Thank You' for the songs from the movie last night - so, thank you."

He smiled and just asked "Did you bring your iPod with you today?"

She couldn't tell him that it hadn't left her since last night except for when she showered this morning. That she had at least one ear bud in as she listened to the entire soundtrack in bed until she fell asleep. That she had foolishly listened to that partly-sung-in-French song again while she was getting ready this morning and had listened again in the car. That she had imagined Chuck singing it to her, what it meant between the two of them and what secrets it seemed to reveal.

So she simply held the iPod out to him. He took it gently from her hand and smiled before abruptly rolling his chair back to a desktop behind him with one well-practiced kick. He plugged into the cable that had apparently been waiting for her arrival and uploaded a playlist he had put together after she had left last night.

She watched the progress indicator and lamented the fact that she would have to leave this iPod behind one day for fear that it could somehow be linked to Chuck's civilian account or some other way - and fought the recurring nagging terror of whether he would survive to truly be a civilian ever again.

Despite all this she continued to carry it with her almost all the time at least when she wasn't on a mission. And she had created her own account that mirrored what he had put together so that one day she would still have this piece of him.

Her very own Orpheus.

The update finished quickly, punctuated by an "Aaaaaand...done!" from Chuck.

He handed it back to her already scrolled to a new playlist named 'MR medley'. He explained, "You may know some of these songs but I thought I'd fill in any blanks. And I put two versions of one song on there - the Whitney version is more powerful but I think the Dolly Parton version is...sweeter." She accepted the returned iPod and kept her promise to herself.

She had suspected that he would know that she would be curious about the songs that made up the medley. And she had told herself that if he did what he had just done - if they knew each other that well - then she would give him this.

She was terrified but also knew how impressed he was with her language ability. She was glad that she could share this with him even if she couldn't yet articulate the depth of its meaning and she extracted the folded paper from her back pocket.

"Chuck, do you know what track number 13 on that soundtrack means? The one after the tango?"

He too had listened to parts of the soundtrack last night before going to bed in childish hopes that she was doing the same. He mentally inventoried the soundtrack and looked at her sheepishly as he realized he had no idea what one of the songs - the one almost entirely in French - the one that made him wish he could sing something as simple and beautiful like that to her - meant.

He drew out his "Noooo," suspiciously as he wondered how big a fool he had made of himself and hedged, "Its pretty, though."

"Yeah, it is. But you should brush up on your French. I'm not entirely sure it's not about Carina."

She smiled as she stepped forward to hand him the folded piece of hotel stationary. As she did so she thought of his disastrous Spanish and couldn't resist leaning further in with her hands on the arms of his desk chair to whisper in his ear in a way that gave him goosebumps. "If you put some time into the Romance languages? You'd be deadly."

She stepped back and stood up slowly and he cautiously unfolded the page and glanced away from her to read its contents. She had translated all of it for him. He looked at the first verse written in her elegant, flowing hand. He almost chuckled as he understood the Carina reference to red hair in the first line but his expression turned blank as he tried to process what she was trying to tell him with the rest.

About herself.

About him.

She had retreated to the doorway. He looked over at her and she smiled sweetly back before flushing slightly and turning to walk back out to the courtyard to wait for him. He looked down once more at the translation she had written out for him - memorizing the first four lines - before he shut his computer down and rose to join her.

.

* * *

.

_"The moon, too white, puts a tiara on your red hair_

_The moon, too red, with glory splashes your tattered underskirt_

_The moon, too pale, caresses the opal of your indifferent eyes_

_Princess of the street, you are welcome in my broken heart"_

.

Composite translation of _La Complainte de la Butte_,

by Georges Van Parys and Jean Renoir

(covered by Rufus Wainwright)

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: _Moulin Rouge!_ It is a kaleidoscope / freight train of color, sound and motion. Especially for the first twenty or thirty minutes. So much so that the exclamation point is part of the title. It is also the story, like the opera _La Traviata _(right down to the manner of the courtesan's death), of a woman who sells herself for a living and falls in love. Although very briefly. (In the BtVS season 7 episode "The Killer in Me" a minor character amusingly notes that one of the things she likes about Willow is "the way you always turn off the Moulin Rouge DVD at chapter 32 so it has a happy ending.")

I have long contended that, if you were to fully embrace the honey pot aspects of the CHUCKverse (or any spy story that includes that trope, really) that there is a pretty good story that deals with accepting one's past and includes that theme... if it could somehow find a balance and do it in a non-trivial, yet minimally-smarmy, way. That such a woman has to cope with having done that and the fear of revealing it to someone she loves. But its a REALLY hard story to pull off and, in a "following canon" context, I didn't want to drag that burden along for the entire canon ride. Frankly, I don't think I could pull it off in any context.

But its an important theme since we aren't sweeping seductions under the rug and, having moved past Carina's first visit (the character who will reintroduce the "engaged to a mark" story later), Lon Kirk and now Ilsa and her engagement, hopefully we can put that topic to bed for a while.

(No pun intended...yeah, sorry. It totally was.)

I have always wondered how the "speaker" in Elton John's _Your Song_ couldn't remember if the subject of the song's eyes were green or blue. Unless they changed with the light or something. And the "_Elephant Love Medley_" contains SO many songs (thirteen, including intro dialogue) but _I Will Always Love You_ (of _The Bodyguard_ fame) is the one recorded by both Whitney Houston (1992) and Dolly Parton (1974).

_La Complainte de la Butte _IS in the movie but you have to be listening for it. It can be faintly heard near the very beginning when Christian first arrives in Paris, at the train station. Also, FYI, the movie's credit scene instrumental outro _Bolero_ might be the best song on the soundtrack but you have to get the one of the alternate soundtracks to get it. Thank goodness for iTunes. (You can You Tube it - "Bolero Moulin Rouge")

The next episode (Marlin) is crazy complicated and my draft version currently consists of only a six chapter outline fewer than 100 words long and it's summertime so... no guarantees on timing. But as always thanks for reading and stay tuned!


	28. XXVIII: Between Two Worlds (1:2)

...wherein Sarah struggles to maintain the borders between her world and Chuck's...

Canon Reference: Entr'acte scene between Episodes 112 ("Undercover Lover") and 113 into the early part of Episode 113 ("Marlin")

Contents: One chapters, a mere fewer-than-8K words and its seems to have turned into a songfic... so that happened. (The shame!)

A/N: So, I've been enjoying my summer and not getting too fussed about writing on any particular schedule. Or maybe that's an excuse because Marlin is such an important episode, so crazy complicated and unlike most episodes incorporates every character into the main narrative. Some of that is still true. There were multiple abandoned approaches and Ch 86 (next part) is still being stubborn but mostly other priorities have simply taken precedence.

That said, I have left at least a few interested readers hanging for far too long and wanted to keep the ball rolling. So, as much as I wanted to present these next three chapters as one entity (like I do) here's the first part. Its a little dark and it in mind when Part XXIX surfaces, hopefully sooner rather than later but it WILL come.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership of the P!nk song _Sober_ (if you spell Alecia Moore's stage name with an "i" you're doing it wrong), Metallica's _Welcome Home (Sanitarium)_ or the movie Die Hard III is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXVIII: Between Two Worlds (Part 1 of 2)

* * *

.

084: Sanctuary

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Burbank, CA; Wednesday, April 2, 2008; 6:35 am

.

* * *

_Sober \sō-ber\ adjective,_

_devoid of the influence of any intoxicating agent_

* * *

.

As the sun began to force the night aside, a shadowy figure slipped from shadow to shadow, unseen even by the surveillance cameras. They should really upgrade to infrared out here in the courtyard even though it did not take the full brunt of the sun's first rays. That would happen later in the day. For now it was... sheltered.

But she knew dawn was usually the best time to pass through video surveillance you couldn't deactivate. Daybreak. Magic hour. Really, only those first few minutes. The opposite of the same effect on the naked human eye at twilight. When the rapidly changing contrast between no-light and daylight tended to saturate both the camera and the display device. Unreliable but often at least moderately improving the chances of passing through the frame undetected.

She tried to convince herself that she hadn't deliberately considered that tactical advantage when she began her approach. But the truth was more damning. She didn't need to deliberately consider it. It was knowledge that had crept into her DNA, now part of what she was.

It was just so incredibly easy for her to become that creature again.

Graham was counting on it.

.

* * *

.

_"Ah, ah, night is calling_

_And it whispers to me softly 'come and play'_

_Ah, I... I am falling_

_And if I let myself go, I'm the only one to blame"_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

.

She should have just walked boldly up the path and let Casey think what he liked. Slinking from shadow to shadow reminded the Agent too much of the infiltration of a villa on a secluded portion of the Santorini coastline. That one was well before dawn with the benefit of darkness as her shroud.

The target didn't have a name. Oh, she knew what he was called but intelligence strongly suggested it was not his birth name. There were theories. One relatively convincing one but none with any degree of certainty. That was better.

She preferred to think of opposition on missions, especially a person she was about to kill, as "the target". She would almost rather kill him, leave the way she came and be done with it. At least she was only responsible for his extraction. Someone else would be responsible for the questioning.

In the moment, she had even silently praised herself for not killing his girlfriend. Although when she woke up screaming the kick to the woman's jaw could possibly have killed her. It definitely broke her jaw.

But if this could have been done without bloodshed, Graham wouldn't have sent her. That was the whole point after all. Like dozens of times before, he wouldn't have called upon his Enforcer if there hadn't been any death to do.

In the here and now, inside the refuge of this courtyard, she considered the sensors on _this_ window. This portal between darkness and light, even though with the break of dawn it was currently darker inside than out. Everything was backwards.

The sensors were barely perceptible even though she knew they were there. These sensors on these windows would be easy enough to cross wire without tripping the alarm. Another upgrade they needed to consider as they completed the underground base, prepared to break ties to the German hot dog franchise that had been an expedient cover and - to Sarah's great relief - shifted the operation to longer term.

She couldn't be bothered tonight; she was far too tired. When Casey was alerted and saw her, she would just use the same excuse she had been using for everyone else. Herself included. She was just here so Chuck's sister would see her in the morning.

It was just to maintain the cover.

The shadow popped the lock on the window. It was beyond simple. Obviously, considering that Morgan Grimes could do it. There was another window in a sea-side villa with locks and alarms not so easy to defeat. That window had led to one of the most ruthless men in the world rather than one of the kindest.

This window, a person could simply walk up to. The other window had been considerably more difficult to reach. If they had considered it easy, they wouldn't have decided that leaving a cliff-side luxury compound completely undefended from a sea approach was suitable security just because their boss didn't want anything blocking his view.

She didn't need anything other than a mask and snorkel to approach the cliff as the tides changed, turning down the offer of a disposable DPV. Minimal equipment to scale the cliff, which she had discarded when the holds in the rock face were revealed to be more than ample. A bit of piano wire and a dozen knives of varying uses to dispose of any resistance quietly. She could pick up a firearm along the way if she needed it. But if she needed it that would mean she had already fucked things up.

She had selected mostly throwing knives secured to her wrists and thighs but had also requested that two wicked underhand gripped curved ones be delivered to her out of semi-retirement. Her two primary knives for a mission like this were of her own design and meant for extremely close combat. It would seem a long dagger had been bent around her fist and down her forearm.

Those unfamiliar with them might hold them turned up to cover their fists, slash or stab upward. Although they could be used that way she designed them to be turned downward to convert most of her forearm into a razor sharp instrument of death. Or, with a subtle shift of her wrist, to pop out like talons to stab downward when grappling or to finish off an opponent.

She was fortunate not to have seen Graham's grim satisfaction when he saw them on the equipment request she submitted after planning her approach. Or to have seen the wicked smile on her own face when she opened their case and retrieved her razor sharp old friends during her mission prep. Or to have seen the change in her expression when she was distracted by the memory of Chuck asking about the scene in the third Die Hard movie where a whirling woman wielding a slimmer knife had dispatched a security guard with multiple spinning slashes.

Sarah had called it overkill. Reserved for groups of enemies not for butchering a single opponent. And avoided revealing that a similar whirling, disorienting flash of blades was just the fighting style she had developed, mastered and used numerous times with far more blood spilled.

She tried to shake off the persona of the lethal Enforcer and paused before swinging the window open. Behind _this_ window was the man she was responsible for protecting. By any means necessary. And whose survival had taken on personal importance to her. Not a man she was responsible for capturing by any means necessary.

Here, if she encountered anyone other than "the primary", it would be someone who considered her a friend. One of two doctors. Or possibly the harmless but ever present Morgan.

The "primary" on the volcanic Greek island was fortunate in his friends too. He only had four full-time bodyguards on the current night duty rotation but they were fiercely loyal. Two were childhood friends from the slums, the other two were men who had helped him wrest control of the smuggling operation from its previous kingpin.

Despite their loyalty, they weren't the types who could make themselves useful in any way other than physical. So they had turned themselves into elite commandos through the best training illegal funds could buy. They enjoyed hurting people. As the Enforcer once did. Sparring opponents were just as likely to be killed as strangers in a bar. They had previous military training but were now lethal. Not as lethal as her but few are. They were lethal enough they did not permit her to entertain the notion of "minimal force".

Fortunately, the skill set required to become a proficient killer - a skill set like hers - didn't necessarily require intelligence. She had disturbed pillows on the window seat and had no opportunity to replace them properly. She hid when she heard his hand on the doorknob and saw the shadow of his foot under the door. He had noticed the pillow slightly askew on the window seat but simply picked it up and gazed out the window.

She was almost certain it did not feel as bad as it looked or sounded. More like two quick pin pricks. Maybe even less given the sharpness of the blades. One pin prick accompanied by a wheeze as a curved blade slipped between his ribs and deflated a lung, robbing him of his ability to cry out. The other pin prick punctuated by a wet gurgle as the first blade's mate dragged across his neck, turning the pillow still in his hand from white to black in the moonlight.

She knew from experience that blood was black in moonlight.

She was sure he thought he was something special but the gurgling, drowning sounds as he clutched at his fatal throat wound should be sufficient evidence that he simply wasn't good enough. Lethal training didn't matter when you couldn't even realize you were being hunted. And she was the most silent huntress in the world. It was why she preferred knives like this for close work. By the end of the night, Diaz's two childhood friends could attest to their effectiveness. The other two dispatched with wire or her own hands, both with creative application of leverage.

She was unseen by the others but with the first one their reflections on the window glass locked eyes. His shocked brown ones and her merciless blue ones. Incredibly blue they had recently been described. She thought what a fool he was to be surprised that the type of life he lived would end with no warning. Would end this way. From the blades he never saw coming.

She liked to think that when it happened to her at least she wouldn't be surprised. By whatever finally killed her, sure, she would be surprised in the moment. It would most likely be something she didn't see coming either. She had laughed enough times at Death when she _had_ seen Him coming that she knew He, just as she would be with an opponent who had outwitted her numerous times, was already planning to sneak up on her when the time came.

When she was no longer his loyal servant. When Graham no longer had leverage over her such that she blindly accepted his decision that people had to die.

But she wouldn't be surprised to be killed.

That she had earned.

.

* * *

.

_"Ah, ah, sun is blinding_

_I... I stayed up again_

_Oh, I... I am finding_

_That's not the way I want my story to end"_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

.

Sarah wished that mission on the island of Santorini had been a distant memory in her rear view mirror. That she could pretend that she was a different person when she did those things. Just a recollection of her time as Graham's Enforcer when she was angry at the entire world and took it out on whatever person Graham put in front of her. When she pretended she didn't know any better. When she believed the myth of psychological warfare Graham had created about her. When she was untouchable.

But it was less than a day ago. Her plane had landed less than an hour ago. Her debrief, thankfully, conducted en route. She reasoned that conducting her mission in any way other than the way she was trained, being any less ruthless, was a sure way to get herself killed. To never find her way back to Burbank. To never find her way back at all; back from the wicked Enforcer who, to Graham's delight, had come out to play again last night.

The only thing more troubling than her actions of the last few days were her fears of what she might be returning to. Her concerns returned immediately to Burbank and what she might find there. An apartment full of laugher and warmth? Or blood on the walls? Or everything that made it such a haven for her simply... gone? It was enough to keep her from sleeping.

At least when she was in the same city she could usually treat it as an assignment and sleep as though she was simply part of a watch rotation. She even had the benefit of spending the occasional nights in the same room and bed with the object of her concerns. Those were the only nights she truly slept well.

While abroad, she was able to focus on the task in front of her. But when she was trying to get back, not just physically returning but trying to pull herself out of dark, dark place where she had once felt so at home, demons haunted her at every turn.

If she were to sleep, she had little faith in finding any refuge in even the recent additions to her recurring nightmares. She feared she was more likely to find that any new occupants of her garden, flowers who undoubtedly belonged there, had overthrown the only element within it that didn't want to destroy her. It wouldn't be the first time.

To sleep only to find the oak tree that made her nightmare bearable uprooted. Ripped from the cold earth and cast out in pieces, over the walls she could not scale. Then she would wake up wondering whether the removal of the shelter of the tree was prophetic in any way, just her fears run wild or an indication of what she already knew: that she deserved no such refuge.

It was better just to stay awake and consciously dwell on what she had done. On how deeply she had delved into the dark place within her. Another soul-sucking mission. A potential drug-money connection with Fulcrum that Chuck had discovered. The perpetrator detained for further questioning and Graham's satisfied grin at her demonstrated proficiency. His game of chicken attempting to determine whether she was truly still his best assassin or just making a good show of it was irrelevant.

By the time this was over, if he had his way, she would be what he had crafted her into again out of sheer repetition. His violent use of her spawned violent plans. She considered that perhaps the time was approaching when she should pay Graham himself a nighttime visit.

As she grinned wickedly at the thought, Agent Walker, Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer, placed her hand on the window frame now in front of her and the rising sun, the darkness within and the glass itself conspired to show the woman attempting entry exactly what she was. Those same merciless blue eyes staring back at her. She didn't want any part of _this_ her to enter this portal between their two worlds.

She usually thought of the arch way into the courtyard as that portal but the wicked killer had found her way through another impenetrable fortress without even her better self realizing it or being able to prevent it. Through that border between their two worlds.

She could be Agent Walker, or even an unnamed Enforcer, on the other side of the arch. Or on this side of the window. She didn't want any part of that world inside his room.

She removed her hand from the window pane and the Agent looked down at her clothes before stepping through. She hadn't paid attention in the low light of the plane as she debriefed and later the glare of her laptop screen obscured it too. She had rushed here and been too lost in thought otherwise to notice it.

Blood is black in moonlight.

It was still just dark stains. Difficult to discern as red and likely not red at all any more as it had dried by now. The rising sun revealed it on the sleeve of her jacket and another at her waist. What was she thinking coming straight here? She even _had_ a change of clothes in the car she just hadn't thought to take the time to change. She tried to get here while it was still dark. As though she could be one creature in the darkness and another in the light of day.

Agent Walker shed her jacket and her gloves leaving her in a black tank top. Her wrist knives were shoved into a breast pocket of the jacket as she checked her pants for stains and found a small one by her knee. She wanted to shed her pants too but being discovered in Chuck's bedroom was one thing, having apparently arrived with no pants was another. She moved to unfasten her ankle knives and realized she was being irrational.

She had been in Chuck's apartment armed before. It was a requirement of his protection. She just hadn't entered so soon after _using_ her weapons before. She left the ankle knives in place, she would tuck them under the bed on the side farthest from the door when she disrobed. Which left the nearly footlong knives, designed for no purpose other than killing, strapped to the small of her back.

She removed her belt, collecting each of the matching blades as it was freed, and laid them inside her jacket. The Agent considered that she would be better armed with them than without them, while the woman who wanted to be allowed inside lamented that she felt so incomplete without them.

Graham had been morbidly ecstatic when she requested they be included in the mission kit that would be in place for her to collect when she arrived on site. They were her alter ego's calling card.

After starring down at them for an uncomfortably long time, knowing she was leaving herself exposed to anyone who happened by or looked out their window, Sarah Walker rolled her jacket up into a ball. She hid it and its lethal contents behind a thick bush for later collection and returned to the window.

She blew out a deep breath, let her hair down to fall around her shoulders and shook it out. She swung the window open avoiding the gaze of her own reflection and saw Chuck's long, lean body covered by the bed clothes. That was the worst part of these side missions Graham sent her on; returning and not being absolutely certain until she laid her eyes on him that Chuck would still be here when she returned.

Sometimes she just checked the live feed. Paranoia had recently made her consider that the feed might be tampered with and she now tended to come by. She didn't always enter but today she felt a need to keep company with the living. She paused with one foot through the window until she saw Chuck's body move with his breathing. Only then did she feel she could leave Agent Walker outside and she felt herself smile as she moved to enter.

As she passed through the portal, she caught another glimpse of herself in the glass. Eyes that seemed a little less cold stared back and seemed to approve of her entry.

.

* * *

.

_"...its so good 'til it goes bad_

_'Til you're trying to find the you that you once had_

_I have heard myself cry 'never again'_

_Broken down in agony just tryna find a friend"_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

.

Sarah had mostly disrobed, hidden the ankle holster containing her three remaining knives (knives she knew had never been used) and stood standing over him for a few minutes. She knew how incredibly selfish this was of her. The vast majority of men who had been in a position to see her standing over them like this would have known it was their last sight if she had given them any indication of her presence before she ended their miserable, wicked lives.

Since Ilsa's visit Sarah had been taking stock of her life and realized an inescapable truth: that she too had lived a miserable, wicked life. Given the choice between contemplation and acceptance she had avoided making the harder choice. She had fought to maintain some semblance of self within the skin of the assassin she had become and lost that fight.

At least for a time, she had mechanically gone about her duties or, at her worst, reveled in her abilities. Among the worlds killer elite she liked to think she didn't enjoy the killing itself but she did enjoy the feeling of invincibility that accompanied it. It was impossible to separate the two. And there was a time when she had surrendered to the demon in her.

Standing here nearly naked and exposed both emotionally and physically also made her consider that a small few men had seen her approach a bed with something else on her mind. A few stolen moments of heat and human contact to reassure her that she was still among the living. If Chuck woke and saw her standing with untamed hair in just a tank top and her panties he would have every right to think she was there for the same thing.

As much as she craved that physical intimacy with him, it also terrified her. Some of it for practical reasons. Graham was onto her. He was testing her and she knew it. And Casey had mentioned a few times that Beckman was adamantly against fraternization. This type of interaction under the guise of strengthening her cover as his girlfriend was reluctantly accepted. An actual physical relationship with Chuck would be short lived.

Once discovered, her judgment would be questioned or simply dismissed as questionable. She would be deemed unable to follow orders objectively. She would be removed from the assignment and she would have no way of knowing if he was safe.

Sarah had deliberately stopped reminding Chuck that their relationship was _just_ a cover. It needed to appear that way to everyone who knew her true nature and the opposite needed to appear true to everyone who did not. But Chuck, with a foot in each world and absent any explicit clarification from Sarah herself, tended to half-believe both. She couldn't say how much she cared about and needed him and they couldn't stop subtly reminding him that "Agent" Walker was his protector and he was "the asset".

It was yet another reason not to jump into a physical relationship with him, even though it would be much, much easier to show him how she felt than explain it. The problem was that he would not receive that message clearly. He had been betrayed by so many people, abandoned by so many people, we would never be truly certain of her sincerity. Even if she expressed herself physically.

That was why she didn't dare allow herself to pursue anything more than a stolen cover kiss, or holding hands in public, or using him as a pillow during movie nights with Ellie and Devon. And even those were likely to be construed as potential manipulations or even keeping him on a string. There had to be lingering doubts. He would be a fool not to think such things and he was no fool. And such thoughts would be even more hurtful given what he had been through.

His insecurities were why she couldn't bring herself to simply tell him that "just a cover" had turned into at least "just as much real as a cover". Her insecurities were why she couldn't admit it to herself. What a pair they made.

That didn't make it right. Or healthy. For either of them. It was entirely selfish and unfair of her to even be here.

She knew Chuck's history. That everyone leaves him. Everyone except Ellie and Morgan. She hadn't fully appreciated that at first, and probably never would, but she had some idea now of why Chuck felt a need to remain near both of them. His mother had left. His father had left. His best friend had betrayed him. A woman he loved had betrayed him.

A few conflicting details may have been recently revealed but none of that changed what he had experienced. Sarah knew that if she was going to say something as significant as "I want to see what we can be together" to anyone, that it was not something she was mentally prepared to follow through on. No matter how much she wanted to say it. And saying something like that to Chuck would mean so much more.

Words were meaningful to him. It was why it was so hard for him to lie. If you don't mean it, don't say it. Sarah had been raised with a different set of rules. Say whatever gets you what you want. Having no intention to follow-through on something made it even easier to say it.

Chuck had constant doubts about her presence in his life. And rightly so. If she were to tell him how important he had become to her, she wouldn't be surprised if his first question was whether she meant it. Or how could he know that she meant it. Hurt, maybe, but not surprised. He shouldn't trust her. And if she said something like that and left abruptly, either because she was reassigned, died on a mission with no notice of her status or just chickened out and ran away, his lasting thoughts of her would be that she was not what he hoped.

If she was going to take that step it had to be under circumstances where she was prepared and able to follow through. In the meantime, anything else beyond the bare minimum for their cover was pure selfishness. She knew that.

So what the hell was she doing here?

She told herself that it was just because Ellie would be coming home soon and she hadn't been around as much as her cover demanded due to missions like this most recent one. Her alleged purchase of the Weinerlicious store front and plans to convert it to a frozen yogurt shop had gone a long way toward addressing Ellie's suspicions about Sarah's financial situation. And the new base of operations which the new store front would conceal gave them far more options to secure Chuck's safety in the event of a security breach without completely dismantling his life.

Sarah's new story was that a fictional grandfather had died before she even moved to California and left her with a fair bit of money, the bulk of which had been tied up due to a dispute among extended family until recently. Her backup plan was that she was in witness protection. That her testimony (of which she could conveniently reveal no details) had been so helpful that the government set her up with a small business to run but she couldn't really say much more than that.

Ellie was too insightful. Considered Sarah too bright for a food service job to be the limit of her ambition and Sarah couldn't help but feel some pride and satisfaction in that. "Owning" her own business and government relocation from a more appropriate but undisclosed former job would put the clever doctor off the scent.

That was the excuse Sarah would use for why she was here. To allay Chuck's sister's suspicions.

But Sarah also knew the true reason. The reason why it couldn't wait. Why she had rushed here. When she went on these missions, when they required her to be the ruthless killer of old, she could feel herself slipping away.

She liked to pretend she had never been proud of her lethality. Of being the best in the world at something so foul. That she had never felt intoxicated by the feeling of invincibility it gave her. That she hadn't let herself become addicted to killing, or at least the thrill of doing so to avoid being the one who was killed... until something in her had started to change.

Even as she slipped back into the amoral persona of her former self over these past few missions, she had seen herself for what she was. What she had done. And her thoughts often turned to the man who looked at her like she was the better person she hadn't realized she always wanted to be. Who thought she could do anything. Who saw her as worth more than the uses Graham coveted her for. As more than the person she knew herself to be. Who didn't know the truths of her that she had been considering. Both that his continued safety was a big reason for her to keep up the charade of her former self and that someone so ruthless, deadly and deceitful did not deserve to be looked at that way by someone so kind.

Her life before Burbank was easier when she simply didn't allow herself to face the truth. She had been weak and cowardly. It had simply been less painful to embrace the darkness. She had come here so he could make her feel like she hadn't fallen back into the abyss. That a better her was somehow possible. For him to look at her that way. Or just touch her without recoiling with even the limited knowledge he already possessed of the things she had done.

It was completely unfair.

She decided she had done what she came to do. Chuck was safe and alive and sleeping peacefully in his bed. He didn't need her coming in, reminding him of what they could not be to each other under the current circumstances, just so she could use him as her tether to some sense of humanity.

She knew she should go and had made no noise to wake him. She felt the heat running down her cheeks and ventured one last look at him before she turned to go.

When she did, Chuck was looking up at her sleepily and without a word he pulled the covers back to invite her to lay with him.

.

* * *

.

_"I don't wanna be the girl who has to fill the silence_

_The quiet scares me 'cause it screams the truth"_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

.

It was more than the fact that leaving now would be impossible to explain. It was an invitation she was powerless to resist. She was supposed to be the undetectable assassin and she knew she hadn't done anything or made any sound that should have disturbed his sleep. But like always he had apparently sensed her. Sarah kept any comments about Jedi powers or Spidey senses to herself as she wordlessly slid into bed with her back to him and Chuck wordlessly embraced her.

Sarah let herself sink into his embrace. They were completely still except for their breathing, which always seems to synchronize when they lay like this. Just lying here was something that she could easily explain away if her superiors were to question it but in many ways it was just as intimate as other physical expressions that she would not be able to explain away. It was as confusing to her as it was short sighted of them.

She was crying but she was doing it silently. She may have perceptibly shuddered twice but Chuck didn't say anything. He was so still and his embrace so loose and easy that she had assumed he had fallen asleep until he whispered in her ear.

"Its good to see you," he said softly but clearly and squeezed her just a little tighter.

For as much as he could ramble, he was always efficient with his words when he had something important to say. And he knew as well as her that surveillance was capturing everything and he needed to be careful with what he said. But she heard every unspoken word.

_"I'm glad you're back, I'm glad you're safe, I'm glad you're alive."_

_"I know you were somewhere doing something that hurt you for the good of someone else and I'm just glad that anything bad that happened, happened to someone else."_

_"Anyone else."_

_"I'm glad you're home."_

It made her think of how it could be if there was some sort of arrangement that allowed her to perform her duties yet still _have_ a home. And if he was waiting for her there.

Would that be fair either? Making him wait? Making him wonder?

Then she realized that was exactly what he had been doing anyway. And she wasn't much better. She needed to see him. And it was entirely for selfish reasons. She needed the effect he has on her. The faith he has in her. The vision of the her that she could be if she resisted the pull of the darkness. But, most importantly, she needed to know that he was OK. And she tried to put that into words as efficiently as he had.

"Good to see you, too," she whispered into the darkness and pressed her back into his chest.

She wondered if he could hear the same things in her words as they both lay there silently. Then he moved his arm to find her right hand with his. His were so huge but so gentle. The way he engulfed her hands with his made her feel like hers were something delicate. Not hands that could rend flesh and break bone. Hands that were covered in blood hours ago.

He stroked the back of her hand with his, then lightly gripped it while stroking the same spot and part of her wrist with his thumb. He splayed his fingers out until she did the same, then laced his with hers. He closed his fingers around her fist and she did the same, squeezing his fingers tightly between hers. She could almost feel him smile into her back. As much as he knew when she needed to feed off of his strength, he appreciated hers.

He had said it recently, that even though he couldn't possibly understand... he understands.

Even if this were a different life and she had come home from a daunting, soul-sucking mission and she sought out the restorative power of his embrace, granted without question, she still couldn't tell him the specifics of what was bothering her. But maybe he didn't need specifics...

She moved before she could think better of it and he immediately released his comforting hold on her when he felt her shift. He pulled back, which she should have expected thinking he had pushed to far, but she followed him the short distance to where he now lay on his back. She scooted toward him, seeking to reestablish the contact between them but, most importantly, she let him see her face.

The shock was evident no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He didn't expect to see that. She couldn't blame him, it had been nearly twenty years since someone had seen her cry. Since she had allowed someone to see her cry. But his face softened and he moved his hands gently to the sides of her face. His thumbs brushed over her cheeks and then the bridge of her nose where tears had fallen when she laid down.

She could see the "thank you" in his face. As good as he was with words, he didn't need any to show her he appreciated what she had shared with him with no use for words herself. That she was hurting. That she needed to be here. That she hoped that wasn't too much to ask.

It wasn't. He just looked at her the way she hoped he always would. Like she was precious and worth indulging such selfish needs. He studied her face, like he often did. Every curve and angle of her cheek, chin, nose and jaw. Full of wonder like no one had ever looked at her before.

And then he settled his gaze on her eyes. Eyes he had described as "incredibly blue". For someone so precise with his words she knew he meant that literally. Incredible as in unbelievable. As though they were a blue that existed only in her eyes. Although she thought that unlikely, she liked that he saw them that way. Even though the gaze of a merciless assassin lurked somewhere within them that wasn't what he saw.

As much as she craved him looking at her like this it was hard to tolerate for long. It started to feel like he was looking too deep. Into places she couldn't look yet even though she was determined to face her demons. Until she could, she couldn't let him. So she held his hand against her face as she closed her eyes and tucked into his arm to let him know it was OK. She wasn't pulling away. And then she tucked her entire self into his side and her head on his chest with his hand still clutched against her face.

Chuck relaxed after shifting to wrap his left arm around her protectively and she freed his other hand when he moved to brush her hair away from her face. He was relatively certain of the answer but had to be sure.

"Are you OK?" Chuck asked quietly and only felt her burrow her head more deeply into his chest, breathe him in and twist her fist in his t-shirt.

"Sarah? I'm sorry but I need an answer. What I mean is, is your corporeal presence fully intact? Are you physically undamaged?"

Sarah let out a suppressed chuckle. Of course, he would realize that she completely separated her physical function from her emotional state. As though she may have crawled into his bed mortally wounded so she could bleed out next to him or had been fatally poisoned without saying a word about her impending death.

Actually, it shouldn't surprise her that he knew her well enough to demand that specific answer. Much like kissing him passionately in front of a bomb that wasn't a bomb, had either been the case, she would have been right here.

"Yes, Charles. All systems normal," she replied deliberately woodenly.

Chuck grinned into Sarah's hair at the mockingly robotic answer. Then, when no further information was volunteered, he asked insightfully, "All systems?"

Sarah thought about whether she should say so for several seconds before she finally admitted, "No."

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked gently.

"No," she said just as softly.

He was quiet for a long time before he said exactly what she needed to hear.

"Okay."

"Thank you," Sarah whispered without thinking as sleep began to overtake her.

"You're welcome. But I didn't do anything," Chuck answered as he held her close and felt her breathing change.

Sarah smiled into his chest before she collapsed from exhaustion. Here she could rest. Here she could be free from the demons that haunted her. Here she was protected. From the world and from herself. She wished she had the words to explain just how untrue his statement was. This was everything.

.

* * *

.

_"I'm safe_

_Up high_

_Nothing can touch me_

_But why do I feel this party's over?_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

.

Weinerlicious, Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; Friday, April 4, 2008; 3:30 pm

.

Sarah hadn't batted an eye when Casey barged into the Weinerlicious with his usual lack of pleasantries, saying only "We have a problem."

_Right?_ she thought. _Just the ONE problem?_

But when she asked for clarification and he showed her the bug that Chuck had found in the Buy More she had to agree.

Forty-eight hours. She and Casey immediately closed the Weinerlicious and used the new comms console to get Graham and Beckman on the line and forty-eight hours was what they were given. It was more than generous, really. Two days to find the operative who had planted the bugs and the receiver that had been collecting data. It _should_ take someone that long to cull through the recordings and find anything useful, if there was even anything to find. Maybe they got lucky and nothing incriminating was captured by the recording devices.

So why did she feel like her world was collapsing?

They had been so close. So close to keeping Chuck safely hidden away in his old life. So close to bridging the gap to the new substation where they could have hidden him away until the threat was resolved or at least better defined. Beckman had said relocation to a secure government holding facility. In a few weeks there would have been one under their feet. The Weinerlicious was only supposed to be open for a few more days.

Graham had that conciliatory tone that always set her radar on edge as he characterized the need for Chuck's relocation in terms of keeping Chuck's family safe. Graham was a master of knowing what made a person tick. And that was exactly the argument that would make Chuck accept this decision. Graham had been doing his homework, preparing for this day.

Sarah suddenly realized that Casey hadn't moved or reacted either. They were both staring blankly at the black screen. They couldn't stand around doing nothing. They only had forty-eight hours and they would need to get moving to pull together the plan that was forming in her mind.

Sarah reached out to retract the console and see if Casey would help her work this out.

"Casey," she began without yet looking away from the counter where the console had been, "I don't have access to domestic resources. Those cleaners you used when Tommy and his goons wrecked the Buy More, can you get hold of them again?"

"Probably," he said as he turned to look at her, "Why?"

Sarah moved around the counter and began pacing the floor.

"Its not enough. We'll need more," she muttered without looking at him.

"There are multiple teams all around the area," Casey offered. He had far more options domestically than Walker did. "Some are a couple of hours away but I have access to six teams throughout California if they aren't otherwise engaged. I'm not aware of any terrorist threats which is what they're usually responding to. I can even pull in resources from Nevada, Arizona and Mexico if I have too, just with a little more travel time. Again, I ask, Why?"

Sarah was pacing and talking faster and faster and Casey watched her become more manic.

"We'll need at least two tractor trailers to shuttle everything quickly," she said to Casey without looking at him. "Maybe smaller trucks but more of them. A couple of forklifts in addition to the one at the store. We can just wrap and lift everything tonight as it sits. Its a shame we can't start sooner. The only thing I can contribute is there's a hangar at the airport that should be unused-"

"Walker!" Casey barked to snap her out of it. "Last time. Why?"

Sarah looked at Casey properly for the first time since their briefing. She didn't expect to see what she saw in Casey's face. It wasn't quite pity. He understood.

Understood that she wasn't ready to lose him.

Lately she had been dwelling on the indisputable, inevitable fact that one day she was going to let Chuck down by being the one who left or who was taken away from him without explanation. Now she felt the pain she thought he would feel by letting him down in a completely different way. They were going to take him away from his home. His family. His friends.

From her.

Unless she did everything in her power to prevent it.

The only condition they had been given was a time limit. That left a lot of latitude as long as Casey was willing to help her with this crazy plan.

"Because," she finally answered his question, "We're gonna rob the Buy More."

.

* * *

.

_"No pain_

_Inside_

_You're my protection_

_How do I feel this good sober?"_

_\- Sober_, P!nk

.

* * *

To be continued...

* * *

.

A/N2: Little plot movement (as usual, am I right?) but just a window into how attached Sarah is to Chuck at this point and why. Also why, as she works through her issues, she's still reluctant to spell anything out or even accept some things herself. It's COMPLETELY unhealthy but neither of these two are exactly coming from the healthiest places. I know many are uncomfortable with the concept of Sarah Walker, the killing machine but her reputation (not by NAME) was well-earned and Graham isn't making it easy to kick the habit by leaving time for self-examination.

It really is complicated...


	29. XXIX: Between Two Worlds (2:2)

...wherein Sarah struggles to maintain the borders between her world and Chuck's (continuation)...

Canon Reference: Episode 113 ("Marlin")

Contents: Two chapters (the first is more like several mini-chapters similarly themed under the umbrella of Ch 85: Miscalculations); 6,800 and 3,700 words in length, respectively

A/N: I considered multiple abandoned approaches to Marlin, one with an extended backstory for "Lizzie" only hinted at here. I didn't want to get caught up in a deconstruction of every scene (as I tend to do) so hopefully this works. I've always thought that in this episode, externally at least, Sarah seems strangely accepting of Chuck's potential incarceration so keep the mentality of the previous chapter in mind. For the same reason, I'll also be sticking almost entirely to her POV and ended up collapsing large portions because it got a bit redundant otherwise.

Disclaimers/Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership of any Nirvana song or any song by Paul McCartney and Wings (or Guns N Roses, if you're not old enough to remember the original / don't listen to classic rock radio), the movie _Eraser_, or any characters of The Tick: The Animated Series is asserted or implied.

The title of Ch 86 is a slight modification to a version of a Bible verse, taking it a bit farther from its original meaning. Bonus points (award yourself one of Tom Sawyer's blue Bible Study tickets) if you recognize it without Google.

.

* * *

Part XXIX: Between Two Worlds (Part 2 of 2)

* * *

.

085: Miscalculations

.

Marriott Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles; Monday, April 7, 2008; 12:45 am

.

As its doors finally opened after an interminable few seconds, Sarah couldn't believe she was using the same elevator as the first night.

When, as part of mission reconnaissance, she had gone on a date with a seemingly kind, honest, intelligent, sweet, funny, cute young man only to find out that he - contrary to absolutely everything she had ever been conditioned to believe, suspect, or assume - actually was all of those things.

Sarah pressed the button for the highest floor and smiled despite herself, and despite the situation, when the elevator doors closed and she realized right away that the muzak in the elevator was actually a Nirvana song.

She would never have known that without having met Chuck Bartowski.

With nothing else to do but wait, Sarah leaned against the back wall and prayed no other occupants of the hotel would interrupt her upward progress.

She hated being still. Unmoving. Paralyzed with nothing to do but think. Everything slowed down when there was no need to act. In an entirely different fashion than the way they slowed down when there was a need to act. Without action, without violence, her thoughts were free to weave their way through her haunted mind.

_DING_

The sound punctuated the change as the digital number on the wall was incrementing upward. The number may be increasing but really it was just beginning its countdown to a rooftop where she might find that the man she had grown to depend on in so many ways had vanished.

The hotel was only fourteen stories tall but every high-rise in Los Angeles was required by law to have a helipad for emergency purposes. This one, near the highway, apparently had good sight lines for rapid landing and take off. Perfect for an extraction. That was why her call for air evac led her here the first night, why it had been her first thought and, as Casey confirmed on her way here, why it was chosen tonight.

Never mind that many emergency situations would make landing a helicopter impractical.

Sarah quirked her her mouth at the word her spiraling mind had grasped a hold of. "Never mind". That was the name of the album for the song that was playing in the elevator with an instrumentation that included string instruments and a synthsizer. She had critiqued the misspelling when she had seen it, saying to Chuck, "Nevermind isn't even a word. It doesn't mean anything."

"Its deeply philosophical," Chuck had replied with feigned superiority, "To the enlightened."

She remembered how his face cracked into that heart-melting smile of his and she smacked him playfully in the chest as she often did. Like two kids in a schoolyard.

She wondered if they would ever share a moment like that again.

_DING_

Sarah thought back to the hanger this morning. Where the guts of the Buy More had been reconstructed at her direction from memory having sought him out amongst those aisles so many times.

Where her heart fell just a little bit more every time another of the twenty-eight bugs - twenty-nine counting the one Chuck had found first - was discovered. She knew what Casey was doing; trying to just slip it into conversation so that he wouldn't have to explicitly say that Chuck was going to be shipped off to secure custody if they didn't contain this threat.

Casey always deflected with sardonic humor. Used it to defuse situations that might be breeding grounds for "lady feelings". She had warned that Chuck wouldn't be able to process the idea if he heard it that way. As it was, Chuck still hadn't quite grasped what Casey was saying since he was so distracted over Ellie's - or, she supposed, it was still technically Devon's - missing ring.

A ring is just a dream of a promise until it is given and accepted.

Even she had been unwilling to accept it - process it - the situation, not the ring - even as she considered how to explain it to Chuck. She tried to ease into it and, naturally, he noticed.

"Say it. Say what you're not saying," Chuck challenged. Demanded almost.

As if it was just the one thing that she wasn't saying.

Of course, Casey couldn't stand not saying anything and spelled it out for him. For both of them really.

Hearing it out loud hit her like a ton of bricks.

_DING_

Chuck being Chuck, he immediately launched himself into solving the problem. As much to find a diamond ring that he equated to his sister's future as securing his own future. Maybe more so.

How could anyone possibly be so selfless? What wouldn't that man do for someone he loved?

Sarah Walker was trained and conditioned her entire life to be a survivor. To do what was necessary to emerge as the last one standing. The personification of "Live and Let Die"; another pop-culture bastardization of English she wouldn't have known without knowing Chuck. To someone like her, the very idea of such selflessness was absolutely chilling on so many levels.

Before she could even recover from the shock of it all, the emptiness of it, Chuck and Casey were gone. Off to interrogate the Buy More's version of Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber. And yet another opportunity for her to say something - to say _anything_ \- to Chuck, to indicate what little of her feelings for him that she could even process, was gone.

At the time, Sarah hadn't considered that might be the last time she ever saw him.

Once Chuck and Casey determined that Jeff and Lester had taken Big Mike's marlin to Chuck's place as some sort of a joke or prank, Sarah had taken a calculated risk and contacted General Beckman directly rather than Director Graham.

Beckman was at least less likely than Graham to grin an "I knew it" grin at her before vindictively ordering Chuck's confinement. But Beckman was no sentimentalist either. As Sarah returned to the Weinerlicious and used the new comms center there to contact the General, it was Beckman - not Graham - who made Sarah's worst fear a reality.

_DING_

She should have known that forty-eight hours was too long for someone as risk averse as Beckman to maintain her patience. Sarah figured at least they had a few hours while an extraction specialist was deployed not realizing he was already at the Buy More. She figured she had plenty of time when she received a text from Chuck that would have been cryptic to anyone else saying, "Fish last seen with Morgan".

Sarah was puzzled by the follow-up text message she had received from Chuck. "Schwarma Girl?" was all it said.

Sarah wondered if he was grasping at straws and was about to send a teasing message about his spelling of 'shawarma' - knowing he would challenge her - as if the sign in front of Pita Palace was gospel - but really just wanting to joke around with him for possibly the last time.

Then the woman entered just as the picture uploaded to her phone. The woman Chuck had identified. Sarah's worries for Chuck caused just enough inattention for the tiny, thin woman in knee socks to almost get the drop on her.

Sarah Walker, of all people, should have known better than to disregard anyone based on appearances.

_DING_

Walker remembered Chuck once calling her "Lizzie". It only stood out in her memory because he had described the delivery girl as flirting with Lester. That alone should have been the first warning sign.

Lizzie took advantage of the distraction when the two skaters came in while Walker chose a course of action completely against her instincts and training. When she should have counter-attacked, Sarah instead sacrificed her tactical position to activate the Weinerlicious security cameras.

She took measures so that, in the event that she lost the fight, the identity of the enemy agent would be recorded. She didn't deliberately lose but she had never not fought to win before.

What happened to "Live and Let Die"?

She had plenty of time to regret that in the freezer. As well as wonder why Lizzie had let her live. There were crews already working quietly below her feet and they had sealed off the secret exit in preparation for turning it into an entrance. And there was no way for her to signal them.

A few weeks earlier and she could have exited the freezer easily. It just reminded Walker how close they had been to having a secure location to house Chuck while they assessed and resolved the security breach. A few more weeks and maybe permanent relocation would not have been so high on the list of options at all.

_DING_

Agent Walker stood straighter in the elevator, her pulse racing. The probability of a hotel guest somewhere on floors eight through thirteen needing to move from to an even higher floor shrinking lower and lower.

She didn't know how Chuck had apparently figured out that Big Mike's marlin was in her freezer or why Casey had let him investigate without accompanying him. Or why Casey still hadn't let Chuck fire a gun. He was completely frazzled. Releasing the magazine instead of releasing the safety. She should have calmly talked him through it but every second delay was time for Lizzie to get further away.

And she was fucking freezing.

But now her blood was boiling.

_DING_

Still no stops for the elevator and Agent Walker was involuntarily preparing herself for combat. Muscles coiling and her mind clearing. Or trying to. She still couldn't get over all of her missteps.

When Detective Conway came in and found Chuck, she thought at least he would be safe in police custody. She ducked out of sight in the freezer not wanting to further complicate matters.

She had to get Lizzie. Get the receiver. And she couldn't do that, or even tell Casey who the target was, if Conway apprehended her too.

And incapacitating or killing a LAPD detective was not something she wanted to do.

At least then...

_DING_

Agent Walker thought they had the break they needed until she saw the looks on both Beckman's and Graham's faces. She had worked through Beckman to not tip her hand. Graham sent Longshore.

Under the guise of Detective Conway, he had been lurking among them the whole time while they were chasing their tails to find the receiver.

Maybe if she had gone to Graham, he would have done or said something to tip off his decision.

Or maybe he would have simply yanked Chuck at her first sign of weakness.

_DING_

Agent Walker had still been laboring under the delusion that Chuck was safe at a police station.

She knew she dropped her mask when Beckman said that Chuck - or rather, "the Intersect" - was no longer her concern. When the penny dropped and Conway was revealed as CIA, her mask shattered completely. At least by her standards. Luckily, Casey covered for her and disconnected the conference.

She chose to blindly trust that Casey would be able to get the right extraction plan from his contacts after he covered for her while she quickly changed clothes behind the counter. Armed only with her backup piece, Sarah headed downtown on a blind guess that it would be by helicopter. And trusted that Casey was still on her side.

She was second guessing that choice. She was second guessing everything.

So she focused on what she _could_ do. What she was best at. And that familiar darkness descended over her as she steeled herself to deal with whatever she found up there on the helipad.

Every fiber of the beautiful woman's body turning to steel with vicious intent.

Hoping what she found was something she could fight rather than emptiness.

_DING_

Three floors to go and countless regrets.

All the things she should have said and never found the courage to say.

_DING_

Two to go and a thousand doubts. Questions she had been wrestling with even before Burbank, but especially lately as she traveled the world doing Graham's bidding just like she's always done.

Questions like whether she could live any kind of life other than this as the adrenaline began to surge, charging her system and awakening something horrible and horribly intoxicating inside of her.

_DING_

One more floor.

A hundred things she could have done differently... today and in her lifetime.

_DING_

As the elevator doors opened on the top floor, Agent Walker sprinted through them and she took the remaining flight of stairs to the roof two at a time. She was determined that - if he was even here - she was not leaving that roof without Chuck.

She didn't know how she was going to get them out of this but she wasn't... She couldn't...

Agent Sarah Walker shoved through the emergency door to the final stairway to the helipad and The Wild Card Enforcer burst through the other side.

_Zero: Execute_

.

* * *

.

"Longshore!"

Sarah barked his code name at the phony detective to imply some sort of mission involvement or authority that she definitely did not have while she sized up the situation.

Just Longshore on the roof. No evac team yet. If she could just get close enough...

"Is there a problem, Agent Walker?"

Agent Walker? Of course he had been fully briefed. Or had he been fully briefed? He couldn't know about the Intersect, just that Chuck was a valuable intelligence asset. How much had Graham told him to expect in terms of potential resistance? Did Longshore have a "no fail" directive associated with Chuck's extraction? To kill Chuck rather than lose him to an enemy agent? A status Sarah was about to assume if she...

"Sarah, thank God you're here," Chuck broke into the thought process of her tactical assessment. "Listen, I- I don't- I don't want to go yet."

"I... It's okay, Chuck," she lied.

Like many times before, but only since she had arrived in Burbank, the lie stuck in her throat. Lying had been much, much easier before Burbank.

And this was about as far from okay as she could remember a mission being. Things were about to get really nasty for all three of them. She couldn't bear to lie to him and didn't want to reveal her worst self, the creature that lurked inside of her, in front of him so she tried to fall back on a brazen con and turned her attention to Long Shore.

"Agent Casey is tracking the FULCRUM mole. He should have her in custody soon, so we can hold off on the... Chuck transfer for the time being."

_Well, that sucked_, she thought as she realized she had blown one option. Even Longshore cringed at "Chuck transfer" and fell back to a "by the book" approach.

She knew the protocol as well as he did and he basically quoted it, saying "If there was a change in the operation, I would have been contacted. I have my orders."

So he was a hard case. He'd have to be in this job. At least Longshore had considered her for a moment. But she quickly realized it was him trying to figure out why she was even here.

Sarah tried to reason with him. "We don't have to do this. This is a judgment call. Okay, we can just hold Chuck here until we know for sure."

"His cover was blown. He's gone."

"No!" she blurted out. She wasn't above pleading with him.

"I will take full responsibility. Chuck is my asset; he's my guy." She cut her eyes to Chuck, knowing she had revealed more than she intended, at least like this.

And she knew Chuck heard it in her words too when he visibly gulped.

She turned back to Longshore realizing she was running out of time and running out of options and pleading, "Just... Just give us more time, please."

Longshore had heard more than she intended also. Sarah could almost read the word "Compromised" in his eyes as he assessed her before Chuck distracted him saying, "I'd appreciate it. I really would."

"Please don't do this," Sarah found herself actually begging for just a few more seconds. A few more seconds and the courage to find words she knew would never come. Her throat tightening and eyes burning as something inside her was reduced to a desperation she had never felt... and something else within her but always lurking nearer to the surface, something more familiar, took action to resolve her desperation.

It wasn't even a conscious move. She just slowly gripped the Smith and Wesson at the small of her back. Pausing, ready to draw and ruin Chuck's life in a different way, just on their terms. Or at least her terms.

Shifting her stance and preparing to fight when it seemed her pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

Longshore didn't even see her do it. She didn't know if it was bad positioning on his part or if she had subconsciously shifted to put Chuck was between them so he couldn't see it. Likely the latter.

But Chuck did see her do it.

And when he narrowed his eyes and he shook his head almost imperceptibly, he sucked all of the fight out of her.

Chuck had flashed on Detective Conway - Codename: Longshore - on the ride over and had seen what the Agent was a specialist at. Extracting people, enemies and friendlies. From there, Chuck could see a virtual rolodex of protected witnesses and assets in his mind. Longshore's Intersect file reminded Chuck of Arnold in Eraser. As far as the Intersect was concerned, the guy was legit. He wasn't a friend but he definitely wasn't an enemy and Chuck couldn't let Sarah do _that_.

Couldn't let her add that weight to her soul. Even for him. _Especially_ for him.

Sarah seemed to understand and, though she still gripped her weapon, she hadn't drawn it and she relaxed her stance to Chuck's obvious relief. There he was, calculating again. Seeing what she intended to do and trying to let her know it was okay. Coming to a realization that there was no way out. At least not if he wasn't going to let her do what she needed to do.

Sarah could see in his face that he had foreseen this ending from the beginning and only wished it had been delayed. Could see that she was worth more to him than a futile, ill-conceived attempt to buy him a few more days of freedom.

She just stared at him in wonder, completely out of ideas. Because the most amazing man she had ever met had surprised her again.

He was trying to save her.

And Sarah now understood what Ilsa had meant about someone's voice - or mere presence - taking the gun from her hand.

"Okay. You've got one minute," Longshore reluctantly permitted with the chopper not yet on site, breaking her from those thoughts. She had never not fought to win.

But Sarah released her grip on her pistol, pressing it back down into the waistband of her pants.

"One minute," Longshore stated again, this time emphasizing it to Chuck with a single finger as Sarah stepped toward Chuck at the center of the helipad, trying to find the words to apologize for how badly she had failed him. Chuck spared her from that too.

"I'm not ready, Sarah. I'm not ready to disappear," he rambled to her trying to put his own thoughts in order.

"No. I know... I know." It was all she could say and so woefully inadequate.

"I need you to talk to Ellie. And to Morgan and my friends, and- and- and- and tell 'em..."

Sarah felt the tightness in her throat and burning in her eyes intensify watching her Chuck struggling with how to say "goodbye".

"I don't know. I... Look, if I'm supposed to be dead, just say something that will make it okay. That will make 'em feel all right."

Sarah tried not to react but she couldn't help but blink the tears back and gulp a little. Because he was right. If Ellie and Morgan were informed that he was dead, not only would he become a non-person - like her - existing at the whim of the dark side of their government, but if dead... even as a cover story... there's no coming back.

"Just make sure they know how much I love 'em," Chuck said, staring into her eyes intensely.

Staring into her soul.

Putting an extra meaning behind his words, a hidden message just for her, as he often did.

He couldn't really mean...

"You can do that, right?" Chuck interrupted her thoughts when he saw that she received, if not understood, his message.

Roger, Wilco, MRAU. She remembered explaining the difference to him. He was relieving her of the obligation of explicitly acknowledging it. Or relieving her of the guilt of not saying it back if she wasn't in the same place yet. Or giving her the option to just nod in agreement. Trying to relieve her of the burden of saying anything. Especially since he couldn't even quite say aloud about how he felt about her.

But she did understand. And she would. She would find a way. Not to make it alright. A world that included Chuck suddenly devoid of him could never be right. Maybe she would just tell them everything. At least Ellie. But she would find a way to make sure the people important to him knew that he loved them.

Maybe even find a way to accept it herself as she searched for a way to find him again.

"Course you can," Chuck reacted to her simple nod. "You're Sarah. You can do anything."

Even now he could make her laugh. Both at herself and at his misplaced faith in her.

Because right now? Right now, she didn't feel like she could do anything.

"And, hey, there's a silver lining to this, too," Chuck's infectious enthusiasm returning to his beautiful face even with the top of his hourglass nearly empty, "...you know, 'cause we're not working together anymore, which means, we can go on a date. You can come by my cell. And we can hang out. And you can tell me who the President is."

She sputtered and almost rolled her eyes. How could this man make her laugh and cry at the same time while their world burned down around them?

"And maybe, uh..." he boldly took her hands gently in his own cuffed-together larger ones and said all he dared to say about everything that had gone too long unspoken between them, "...maybe we can see how we really feel."

How is he holding it together when she can feel her tears building? The Buy More nerd she had so underestimated when she first met trying to hold the Ice Queen's shattering heart together.

He really was the strongest man she had ever known. The strongest man she could imagine.

"Time's up" Longshore called out and Chuck looked over at him reflexively. It was as though Chuck had forgotten Longshore was there in his need to do for her what he had asked her to do for the people he was leaving behind.

To make it okay.

He may even have thought of kissing her but either thought better of it given that they had an audience - likely concerned with work getting back to Graham - or simply didn't want their end to be so bittersweet. Especially if the end was the only beginning - the only moment - they would ever have.

He simply said, "Goodbye, Sarah," and turned to go.

He had done all the talking. Rich with subtext and implications. Relieving her of the burden of stumbling over the wreckage of whatever her feelings were right now. Leaving her with a simple goodbye as even her own preferred "see you later" stuck in her throat.

Because she had always looked forward to seeing him later. To feeling herself come alive a tiny bit more when she did. To him putting her back together when one of her side missions tore her apart. Also dreading the day when there were no more next times. Fearing it would happen before she was a whole enough person to open up to him as he had just done with her, as veiled as it was. But she had to say something.

"Chuck?" she called after him, almost quietly, and he turned back to face her.

She didn't know how, or how long it might take. Or if it was even possible. It was a promise she had no business making. But he brought that kind of hope out in her so she said it anyway with as much of a reassuring smile as she could muster as her tears finally broke free and ran down both cheeks.

"Save you later."

It was as much a question as a promise but she saw a flicker of hope in his small smile and felt the pride of knowing that he believed, whether he was right to do so or not, that she could do anything.

Whether she succeeded or not, she put that there.

.

* * *

.

Sarah had been a beat slow when she saw Longshore drop. He fell to his knees, then slumped over. Shot dead but not by her hand.

Sarah felt a strange mix of relief and guilt at her relief even as she pulled and turned her own weapon toward the source of the shot.

Then Lizzie - the fucking Pita Girl - got off a miracle shot that had somehow disarmed her without seriously injuring her. An unarmed Sarah grabbed Chuck and they fled the helipad to the cover of the maze of building machinery on the lower level of the rooftop below the elevated helipad.

Sarah was now looking for ways to get Chuck safely off the roof, take Lizzie out or both when the enemy FULCRUM agent, stalking them now armed with both her own and Sarah's sidearm, began taunting them in a sing-song voice.

"I listened to the receiver," she gleefully taunted.

Both Sarah and Chuck could tell it from her tone and they said it to each other at the same time, "She knows."

"Do you know how many agents are looking for Bryce Larkin?" Lizzie demanded, before asking more quietly, more to herself than to them. "Only one was looking for Tommy Delgado."

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other with their puzzlement on their faces until Lizzie elaborated.

"I should have been with him when he disappeared. We retrieved Larkin together. Packed Larkin off to that butcher in Helsinki together. We did almost everything together. But Tommy said it was safe for me to take another job. Intercepting Larkin on his return trip was going to be a... walk in the park."

Lizzie scoffed at the words as they escaped her mouth and both Sarah and Chuck could tell when her tone changed that her monologuing had gone from professional to personal.

"Nobody cared when a merc like him disappeared. Except for the little girl he saved from the streets from among a hundred thousand girls just like her. Trained me to fight. To kill. To hunt. Well enough to follow the bread crumbs he left for me. Do you know how many of his final locations I had to surveil to finally hit the jackpot? Joining up with FULCRUM just to get those leads to track down what happened to him? Letting those pervs you work with look down my top every day for a month?"

Lizzie realized she was marking herself. That her prey could hear her and circle around to avoid her. She had been going down a rabbit hole thinking about Tommy and where he could have disappeared to these past few months.

The only man who hadn't looked at a starving little girl the way those morons with their video camera had. The way the men who "took care of her" as a little girl had. Thinking only of all the debauched things they could do to her in exchange for just enough food to keep her alive but hungry enough to linger until next time.

She never really knew what he saw in her but Tommy had saved her and taught her the only trade he knew. And when she grew older, he was finally receptive to something more. Maybe more than she had dared to dream lately. But whether that ever happened between them or not, he had saved her. It was time to get back on point and return the favor.

"All this time wasted looking for Bryce Larkin. And all this time the Intersect was here," Lizzie taunted some more. Trying to get one of the two to expose themselves. "Wait till I tell my superiors that. I'll be able to write my ticket. Find Tommy and let the lot of you tear each other apart."

Chuck had heard enough. This Lizzie had them at a disadvantage and, if he was Delgado's protégé, she was good enough to make good on her threats. They didn't have many options.

"Okay, look," he said to Sarah, "What if I surrender, and you run? I mean, I'm going in a cell anyway. What's the difference?"

"Torture," Sarah derailed that idea and marveled at the fact that anyone would even consider sacrificing themselves like that for her.

"Okay, no surrender," Chuck scrambled for another idea but before either he or Sarah could come up with anything, Lizzie began taunting them again.

"I only have one question, Chuck," and Lizzie held her left hand up to catch what little light there was and watch her ring finger sparkle like she had hoped it would on those rare occasions her mentor and lover had looked at her without his vicious mask he showed the rest of the world.

Tonight she would settle for taking that away from someone else.

"...Who's the ring for?"

"She has Ellie's engagement ring!" Chuck exclaimed. Sarah nearly rolled her eyes. Of course that would seem just as important to Chuck as the mortal danger they were in. And the only reason Sarah hadn't called him out on it was the strange twist in her own gut when the Pita Girl mercenary asked him who the ring was for.

As though it was Chuck's to give.

To someone worthy.

Sarah shook off that weirdness. She came up here looking for a fight and now she had a target. She decided to take matters into her own hands and leave such thoughts for later while she did what she did best, telling Chuck, "Try to distract her."

"What?!" he protested as Sarah darted away through the maze of machinery they had already navigated, "How?"

But just the little glimpse of motion Chuck had provided when rising up from cover was enough to get Lizzie back on the scent. He ran and she herded him back to the stairs with a few well-placed shots.

"Chuck, I'm not gonna to go away. Unlike blondie, running off to save her own ass. And to think you were going to give her a rock like this? She must have played you good. CIA? NSA? You can't trust any of them, Chuck. But don't worry, we all get taken in at least that one character-building time. This will be good for you. She's gone. Now its time for you to come with me."

"Okay, okay, look, look, look. You really- You really want to take me in?" Chuck stammered as he looked for any sign of Sarah. Fearing that she _had_ abandoned him and hating that he doubted her even for a second.

"You're going to have to sweeten the deal a little bit for me," Chuck continued to stall as he held his hands up defenselessly staring down the barrel of a gun in each of Lizzie's hands. "Hey, hey, hey, hey. Uh, look. Look, the CIA- they're offering me a nice padded cell, real cush. Can you beat that? I'm a guy who enjoys a a good steam. Can you do- Can you do maybe a steam room or something?"

"I don't think you're really in a position to bargain, Chuck," Lizzie rightly pointed out. "I have two guns. What do you have?"

Chuck smiled back at Lizzie when he deliberately kept from looking directly at the flash of blonde hair rising over the edge of the helipad behind the enemy agent. Lizzie still sensed Sarah's approach and had just begun to turn or she would have never heard an answer to that question.

As Lizzie's eyes widened at the enraged Enforcer charging at her.

Sarah, seeing her stealth approach detected, granted Lizzie the answer to exactly what it was that Chuck had.

Something that made his position not as desperate as it may have seemed.

Conveyed in a single syllable uttered in what could only be considered a growl as Sarah rushed her prey.

"Me."

.

* * *

.

Sarah was out of options. Lizzie had been as vicious as her but mindless of their position relative to the edge of the helipad.

Sarah had heard Chuck calling out not to break the ring - the big doofus - and describing this as "serious spy fighting" as it broke down into schoolyard hair pulling. Sarah had almost maneuvered Lizzie into a choke when Lizzie countered, apparently not caring that the momentum of it took them both off the edge of the roof.

Fourteen stories into a dumpster was another miracle shot. Lizzie was clearly highly trained, maybe even knew how to use a parachute, but apparently not as highly trained in free-fall maneuvering as Sarah Walker. Sarah took a few harmless fists to the jaw and an equally ineffective knee or two to the ribs, neither with much steam behind them with no leverage or footing.

Despite that, she kept her single-minded focus on the softest target in sight. Her only offensive maneuver was to tuck and roll her opponent mid-flight such that Lizzie took the brunt of the impact as Sarah's body crushed against Lizzie's.

Whatever it was they landed on, it was relatively soft and neither was knocked out on impact. Sarah remedied that quickly with a well-aimed punch and, looking up to confirm that Casey had secured Chuck, searched the mercenary Bride of Frankenstein turned FULCRUM agent. Lizzie actually had the receiver taped to the small of her back but very little else of any interest.

Sarah put her hands on her knees and breathed for what seemed like the first time all day which only reminded her that she was surrounded by garbage. But before she moved to see about extracting herself and her prisoner from the dumpster she checked Lizzie's hands.

The ring was missing.

Sarah looked around but didn't see any indications of a diamond. Then Lizzie began to stir and Sarah held her down, face first into the garbage while she restrained her arms behind her.

"You win this round, blondie. You're pretty good. But I'll be back and we'll try it again," Lizzie taunted. She was apparently incapable of shutting up even with blood seeping from her mouth and likely internal injuries.

"Doubt it," Sarah taunted back, finally in a position to do so. "I happen to know there's a vacancy at a highly secure lock down facility."

Sarah grinned at that, hoping she had provided a new occupant for Chuck's designated cell. She would make that trade again and again if the opportunity presented itself. Sarah just needed to find something suitable to restrain the enemy agent or she'd have to knock her out again. And waking at all after repeated knockout blows was no certainty.

"Good," Lizzie replied with a chuckle and a groan. "They'll keep me nice and safe as long as I string them along. I know enough about FULCRUM to do it. I'm the golden fucking goose. You guys want my intel on FULCRUM and FULCRUM is going to want to know what I found out that landed me in an interrogation facility."

"Tell it to someone who cares, 'Lizzie'."

Sarah deflated a little. Lizzie was probably right. Maybe she did have information on FULCRUM but, then again, maybe she would be able to tell the wrong people what she had learned before that happened. It was the same underlying issue she had been battling for nearly the forty-eight hours she had originally been given. The security of a nation versus the freedom of one man.

Any Agent could easily see which was more important. They needed Lizzie alive. Sarah decided to hold her captive down with her arms twisted behind her back hard enough to dislocate a shoulder until Casey could help her with detainment.

"You should care, wiener girl. I'll just wait until someone comes to check on me. They'll want to see what I know. They'll probably be checking to see how much I've spilled about their organization."

And that - coupled with her earlier "wait til I tell my superiors" - was the confirmation Sarah needed. Lizzie had overplayed her hand by prematurely confirming that she had not already reported Chuck's identity as the Intersect to anyone.

Right now, besides the information on the receiver, every knowledge of the Intersect recipient resided with the two men making their way down from the roof (and she hoped Casey had the sense to keep Chuck away while they cleared the scene), their own superiors, the man FULCRUM was currently hunting and two women inside this dumpster.

"Or I'll just tell anyone who will listen just how valuable FULCRUM would consider the information that I have. I'll find some guard willing to do something stupid."

She would. Sarah knew she would. They had no idea how deeply FULCRUM had infiltrated government agencies and they would certainly be scouring any detention facilities. A secret doesn't stay a secret long when the number of people who know the secret - or even know there _is_ a secret - increases.

It was a numbers game all around. The number of double agents within their midst was likely increasing. And Lizzie was threatening to tell everyone she encountered that she at least knew something extremely valuable. It only took one easily coerced person to make the two circles meet. And then...

"Either way, wait until I tell them they're looking for the wrong guy. That I know the identity of the _real_ human Inter-"

Sarah Walker let Lizzie's dead body slump down into the dumpster as the retrieval team Casey had dispatched arrived. Sarah had held Lizzie's wrists with her knee and reached around the front of her torso to her shoulder, as though she was going to allow her to stand.

From there, a human neck was such a fragile thing.

Everyone - including her until she had done it the first time - assumed that snapping a neck came with a loud cracking sound but it was really a series of pops as connective tissue gave way and stressed the spinal cord past its limits.

She should have died in the fall anyway.

When they arrived, Sarah signaled the retrieval team to help her with the body after providing the necessary access codes Casey had given her. Two men helped her remove the body and Sarah lifted herself out.

The retrieval team checked Lizzie over and Sarah didn't correct them. She asked for their best tech guy and, when he wandered over to her past the first corpse he had apparently ever seen, Sarah held out the receiver.

"All she had on her was this. I need to see it thoroughly destroyed before you go."

The tech guy said he had a degausser that would do the trick before the team leader objected saying they should have someone take a look before wiping everything out. Sarah pulled a silenced pistol out of the newbie's tactical holster, threw the receiver into the corner where the dumpster met the brick wall, and emptied the pistol into it leaving it more holes than receiver even as it bounced around with each shot.

"Degauss what's left to be sure," she said as she handed the pistol back, butt first, to the more helpful of the two slack-jawed NSA cleaners. "Inform Major Casey when you're done. And clear my brass," she said, nodding at the shell casings now strewn about the alley.

Agent Walker walked away confidently as though she had the authority to do what she had just done. She'd call Casey, make sure Chuck was OK and give Casey a heads up to smooth things over.

The Enforcer hadn't killed Lizzie. Neither had Agent Walker.

Sarah had.

She waited until she got around the building to crouch down and breathe deeply. She thought she was going to be sick even though she knew with absolute certainty she had done the right thing.

Maybe the disk had intel related to FULCRUM on it, maybe it didn't. But it definitely had Chuck's secret on it.

Any Agent could easily see which was more important but Sarah Walker had never been just _any_ Agent.

And now, whatever she was, she wasn't _just_ an Agent.

.

* * *

.

086: Cast Out But Not Destroyed

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA; April 7, 2008 8:05 am

.

Sarah peeked around the window frame to watch as Chuck made his critical delivery to Devon.

A man who had nearly run out of time thinking he could deliver happiness contained in a sparkly rock on a thin band of gold.

Even Sarah's own sarcastic internal monologue couldn't erase the smile from her face.

Just the glowing hope of it was worth a morning spent in a dumpster, still blocked off as a crime scene at Sarah's request through Casey, hunting through the very garbage that had cushioned her fall and saved her life. She was lucky it wasn't full of needles or just the top layer over a pile of bricks but she was the one who had burst the bag that Chuck had sifted through and it had been pretty disgusting.

Sarah had a slightly less disgusting search area. Hers seemed to be restaurant refuse, spoiled food and the like, whereas Chuck's was old takeout food and worse.

Chuck had gone on enough shopping runs for Ellie and returned with feminine hygiene products without batting an eyelash. He knew his sister's preferences and even checked her supply before heading out without being asked. So, when he reacted the way he had in the dumpster, Sarah knew it wasn't a reaction to a tampon still in its wrapper.

She watched him work. His life as he knew it had nearly ended hours before and, instead of dwelling on it, Chuck was focused on retrieving Devon's ring for his proposal to Ellie.

"Are you sure that Lizzie didn't have the ring on her?" he had asked with only a hint of frustration seeping through.

"When they took her away, all she had on her was the receiver," Sarah answered while sifting through some discarded vegetables.

As lies went, Sarah considered it a small one. Sarah _had_ personally searched Lizzie. And the receiver _was_ the only thing she had on her of interest. Sarah wasn't positive that shooting the shit out of it would do the trick but Casey had confirmed that his team had disposed of it properly. Protecting Chuck's identity had been Sarah's chief concern but she had checked for the ring.

The part that was the lie was that they had only taken Lizzie's corpse away. Disposing of it as effectively as they had some mangled electronic device. She had been prepared to make up some story about how Lizzie's neck must have already been damaged by the fall. How knocking her out had snapped what was already cracked. But Chuck had been surprisingly uninterested in Lizzie's welfare, only wondering aloud if she would be a future security risk and being reassured that she would not.

Sarah was glad not to discuss it much. If she told him exactly why Lizzie wouldn't be a future security risk, she was sure that he would notice just how remorseless she was about it. How he was standing in the presence of Graham's Enforcer. On the very site of one of her kills. But you don't shit where you eat and her subconscious was screaming at her to get him out of this place. Or to get out of his presence.

She just couldn't bear to let him out of her sight just yet.

It was just so easy to solve problems in the very final way she knew how and did better than anyone in the world. Loose lips sink ships. It was that simple. Sarah couldn't allow someone so opposed to them both personally and professionally to walk away knowing the identity of the Intersect. She had convinced herself over the past few hours that it had been a clinical tactical decision rather than the overwhelming fear she had felt at realizing Lizzie's taunting was an accurate situational assessment.

They had discussed her a bit while they had been searching. While Lizzie was monologuing, Chuck had finally keyed on something that initiated a flash: Lizzie's association with Tommy Delgado.

"Can you imagine being so wrapped up in someone that you would go to those lengths?" he had mused while continuing to search, clearly a rhetorical question with no expectation of an answer.

Sarah had simply said "It's best not to dwell on what goes on in the mind of someone like that."

Chuck had just huffed at that and continued to sift through garbage, finally applying some method to it by clearing an area and transferring thoroughly examined garbage to a "Done" pile.

He hadn't noticed that she was just watching him, finally able to breathe and not caring what the air smelled like.

Because he was alive. And whole. And just... here.

Still here.

And he was clinging to the knowledge that The Enforcer's most recent kill had been in possession of the ring on the roof and not in the dumpster. Chuck was more relieved about that than the fact that the only government representative still present on the scene was her.

No one to extract him. No one to harm or capture him. Just someone he trusted. Someone who _had_ managed to save him.

Just an assassin sifting through garbage.

"Oh, then it's got to be here somewhere," Chuck reasoned, without further discussion of Lizzie. Or of Longshore, who had died right in front of him. Or of detention centers where you might, occasionally, be allowed outside to visit controlled locations. That should have been a warning sign for her. He was completely fixated on finding that damn ring.

And just why was she back in this dumpster where she had hours before killed the FULCRUM mercenary? Chuck's sister was an amazing woman and deserved happiness. But she also didn't seem the type to care about the hardware itself. Although it had sparkled like hope made tangible on Lizzie's finger. And her own gut had twisted when Lizzie asked Chuck who it was for even knowing who it was meant for and that it wasn't even Chuck's to give.

But like almost everything in this world, it was replaceable. Sarah hadn't fought Lizzie to save something replaceable.

That's all she was trying to say when she offered a way for them to get off her killing grounds before seeing him here, standing where she did what she does, made her scream in inexplicable frustration.

"You know, Chuck, if we can't find it, we can just replace it," Sarah said trying to keep the edge out of her voice and Chuck finally broke.

"Look, look, look, it- it was Awesome's great-granny's ring, and it's going to be my sister's, okay?" Chuck sped up his efforts as though he expected Sarah to physically drag him out of the dumpster before he found what he was searching for and his rambling accelerated too.

"Is it so much to ask a future brother-in-law to hold a ring so a great guy - someone with actual prospects for offering her a happy life - can have a memorable proposal for his sister? I pretend to still have a real life but I can't even do that one little thing right, so no! If its in here, Ellie's getting _this_ ring."

Sarah wanted to cry for him, watching him frantically trying to claw out a tiny bit of normalcy out of garbage. Trying to recapture one of the few pieces of his life before the Intersect - before her - that he still could.

She wanted to embrace him. To do for him what he does for her when she comes back from whatever hellish assignment Graham has found for her and he makes her feel nearly human again. But, in this state, she was afraid he would just brush her off. And that would break her.

"Devon's been holding onto it for her for ages. Keeping a safety deposit box to hold onto one thing intended for my sister. Something he's had for ages and knew he wanted to give her since he first met her."

Chuck kept rambling as he dug deeper and deeper into what looked like a week's worth of excess take out food. He was barely holding it together. His world had nearly ended on that helipad. It _had_ ended. He had said the only goodbyes he was going to be able to say.

And Sarah had felt it too. Wondering how she was going to keep what she considered a promise but must have seemed like empty words. How she was going to figure out where he was being held. How she was going to get him out. How she was going to save him later.

"It's going to be Ellie's even if its covered in coffee grounds and miscellaneous DNA and- Ha! Ha, ha, ha! Hey! Oh, I found it! Let's go."

Chuck turned to see Sarah watching him, stunned, and considered the situation for a moment. He looked at her and then around them both then back to her as she just quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Uhh, sorry. Sorry... I went a little Bipolar Bear there for a second didn't I?"

Sarah could only guess at what he meant by that, "I'm glad you found it. Can we get out of here now, please?"

.

* * *

.

As she watched through the window, Sarah smiled at how apologetic Chuck had been about snapping at her on the drive to his place. How he shared memories of Ellie playing dress up weddings when she was little. Before she had to take charge of the household and played with friends less and less. Dreamed less and less. Of how much Ellie deserved happiness.

Sarah asked about him. Whether he deserved happiness too. And he only replied with a long exhale and a "one thing at a time" as he stared out the window. Only glancing over as she grabbed his hand reassuringly, not letting go until she had to downshift.

Once Chuck made the drop with Devon, Sarah retreated to lean against the brick wall and wondered about the question left unanswered from the drive over but for herself instead of for Chuck.

Did _she_ deserve happiness?

When Chuck backed out the door watching Devon gently rousing Ellie awake, he closed it softly and turned to see Sarah smiling softly at him.

"Mission accomplished," was all he could think to say, and she relaxed against the brick.

"I can't believe we pulled it off," she said, referring to much more than just delivering what she was certain was about to become Ellie's engagement ring.

"That'll make one hell of a story at their wedding," Chuck joked, getting the feigned look of disbelief from Sarah he was looking for. "Which I'm never allowed to talk about under fear of death. Understood. I have other material."

Sarah smiled at Chuck, his good humor restored, and jerked her head back toward the window.

"You wanna?" she asked.

"What, spy? You?" he joked, as her followed an already moving Sarah and they both looked through the window just as Ellie clearly accepted Devon's proposal.

"She looks so happy," Chuck sighed and Sarah saw it too. No one deserved that happiness more than Ellie. Except maybe Chuck himself.

"Yeah, she does," Sarah agreed out loud, glancing between the woman in question and the man next to her who made it possible.

"I couldn't leave them yet," Chuck said turning slightly toward Sarah but still not facing her. As though he had anything to apologize for.

"You don't have to worry about that," she promised. Another empty, undeliverable promise.

Then, not knowing how long it would be true. Or even if it was true at all. "You're safe," she lied again.

"Yeah, safe for now, though. Right?" Of course, he saw through her. He always sees through her. "I mean they keep getting closer. Eventually, they're going to figure out who I am."

Sarah had no answer for that. No way to reassure him, knowing as he did that any victories would be short lived.

"Don't you think you should go in and congratulate Ellie?" Sarah deflected, not expecting Chuck to fight another fight on another front.

"You want to come in with me?" he asked simply.

It was bad enough there was a killer on Ellie's doorstep much less inviting her inside, no matter how much she wanted to be part of such a scene. So Sarah took what seemed like the easy out.

"Oh, it's family time," she said, thinking it would dismiss his invitation.

And in his usual, efficient way, Chuck stopped her heart by finally looking in her eyes and simply saying, "I know."

It was overwhelming. And Sarah drew a deep breath and took the cowardly way out again saying simply, "Well, good night."

Chuck studied her for a moment and must have seen her for the lost cause she was. Or maybe he was just as exhausted as she suddenly was. Either way, he let her off the hook this time and put on a brave face as he went in to congratulate his newly engaged sister.

Sarah couldn't bring herself to turn away.

Casey deliberately shuffled his feet so she would hear his approach. Sarah didn't even bother to turn.

"We can only keep him here for so long. You realize that, don't you?" Casey asked from behind her.

It was just a matter of time. She really didn't know what she could do to change that. But she did realize something about herself. Something as true of her own happiness as whatever time she might have remaining with Chuck. And, if they weren't one and the same, they were nearly so.

Sarah muttered her answer to Casey under her breath, tears threatening to fall again for all they would never have.

"I'll take what I can get."

.

* * *

.

Casey walked away leaving Sarah to observe Ellie's reaction. Sarah watched Ellie's glee as she flitted about the apartment, kept looking at her hand involuntarily and randomly hugged both Chuck and Devon when she was overtaken by emotion.

Chuck had done it. When his own world was crashing down around him, he managed to deliver happiness on a ring of gold to his sister.

Chuck glanced over to the window as Ellie threw her arms around her newly minted fiancé's neck again and Sarah just offered a small smile back to him before moving to leave.

She couldn't help but feel like an outsider, an interloper, spying on a scene of such joy. It's no different than when she slunk into Chuck's bed for him to warm her soul a few nights ago.

She had just done her job last night. Protected Chuck. Killed someone with her bare hands. Like she'd done a hundred times before. Intruding into someone else's happiness was not what she had earned. Especially after doing such a thing. She had her answer.

She didn't deserve it.

She heard the door behind her as she was walking away and was almost prepared to tell Chuck so, but it wasn't his voice he heard behind her.

"Sarah?"

Sarah turned to see a beaming Ellie, her face with that almost childlike glee, with her nose scrunched up and her striking cheeks seemingly about to burst with joy. Completely overcome with emotion Ellie had reserved for too few such moments of pure happiness. Sarah didn't dare tell her that she looked like a bit like a chipmunk as her face battled between crying, laughing and smiling. Not because there was no way for that to sound like a good thing, but because it didn't detract from her beauty one bit. It was the face of happiness.

"You're not leaving, are you?" Ellie asked with genuine concern as she closed the door behind her.

Sarah shook off any negativity from herself to not detract from that joy, offering a weak excuse.

"I didn't want to intrude."

"That's what Chuck said you said but, c'mon! We're celebrating!" Ellie shifted manically to pure glee.

Sarah sought a better excuse even as she moved to meet Ellie halfway as Chuck's sister practically hopped the last few steps holding out her newly adorned ring finger with the other hand holding it steady.

"I know but- God, Ellie, its beautiful," Sarah couldn't help but say.

This was the first time she had actually had a good look at Devon's grandmother's ring and it was stunning. Just like its wearer.

"I know, right?" Ellie beamed. "I mean, there was a time when I thought it would never happen and I wasn't even sure she did give it to him and he can drive me crazy sometimes but..." Ellie blew out a long, exhausted breath, "I love him! And we're getting married! Seriously, Devon arranged our shifts so we don't have to go in at all today. Come inside with the boys so we can celebrate."

Ellie grabbed Sarah by the hand and started to pull her toward the door before Sarah protested, "Really, Ellie. I'm a mess and-"

Sarah stopped as Ellie took in Sarah's dirty clothes for the first time and asked, in a very Bartowski way, "Do I even want to know?"

Sarah smiled at the bits of Chuck she could see in his sister and used the cover story they had devised in the car to explain their appearance, "Let's just say, Chuck was helping me clear out the last of the Weinerlicious stock and things got a little sketchy for a while."

"Sketchy, or frisky?" Ellie teased in her giddiness before letting that notion go, literally waving it away with her hand. "Never mind. I don't need the details. I'm just glad you're getting squared away with... that."

Sarah had laid enough groundwork on the upcoming transition to a yogurt shop for it to be very plausible and Ellie seemed to have accepted her explanation.

"What with all the travel back and forth... I hope that's all settled now? That you'll be around more? That... whoever... doesn't need you back east?" Ellie tried to ask delicately.

Sarah felt the familiar combination of pleased and disappointed she so often felt in her interactions with Ellie. Ellie was so sweet to her - and to Casey for that matter - and Sarah had to tread so carefully. Sarah hated having to lie to her. But Ellie had picked up on the breadcrumbs that Sarah had placed in their recent interactions and seemed to be deducing the intended "protected witness" story.

Of course, the government _was_ setting her up with a new cover, it just wasn't as a small business owner as part of some sort of relocation agreement. And Ellie's interpretation - that setting up her new business was reaching some sort of turning point and would require her consistent presence - might help Sarah avoid being pulled away so frequently for side missions.

"I hope so too. I think its all settled..." Sarah replied. And the thought of being pulled away less for fewer of Graham's "special" assignments made her feel... buoyant. Ebullient. A whole class of words she had put away to only describe other people long ago.

"...but I thought we were celebrating. C'mon, show me again!" Sarah demanded good-naturedly, feeling something akin to hope for the first time in a long time.

Sarah actually studied the ring this time. And the way it looked on Ellie's seemingly delicate fingers. Fingers that Sarah knew had worked to the bone to raise Chuck and then to help others. Sarah was a little disarmed when she looked up to see Ellie's eyes - a similar hazel to Chuck's but his predominant amber giving way to a little more of a softer green - already fixed on hers.

"Sarah?" Ellie began hesitantly, "You're not... you're not just Chuck's girlfriend to me. You know that, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... I know you don't like to share a lot. And that's OK. I want you to know that's totally OK. But I like you. I like you a lot even though we don't know _each other's_ deepest secrets. So... if you had to... relocate or something..."

Ellie huffed with frustration at herself as Sarah processed the variety of angles Ellie had just hit her from. "What I'm trying to say - poorly trying to say - is that I should have known Devon was proposing. Maybe even hoped he was. Because Morgan found the ring in Chuck's locker and thought Chuck was going to propose to you-"

"Ellie... I-"

"I know, I know. You guys haven't known each other that long. I mean, eight months isn't exactly unheard of but as I was wondering if it was really Devon's ring or what Devon was waiting for or if Chuck was really going to beat him to the punch like that, I realized that I wasn't jealous. I was really, really happy for him. And for you. For both of you.

"I'm not saying you should or saying it to push you into anything you're not ready for or anything, its just... If you had to go. And if it was a sudden... like, an emergency or something and you couldn't tell us what was going on... If Chuck had to choose whether to go with you... I just think as long as he's with you, I'd be happy knowing that he's happy."

Wow. Sarah had _not_ been expecting that leap.

"Ellie, I think we have plenty of time for all that."

"Good. I hope so," and the smile began to overtake Ellie's face again. "Because I really need help with planning the wedding."

"You want me in your wedding?" Sarah asked with genuine surprise.

"Of course I do. And not just because you're going to be my goofball brother's plus one. You'll help me right?"

Sarah didn't even have to think about her answer.

"I'd love to."

Sarah let Ellie pull her toward the apartment and Sarah caught a glimpse of Casey at his window. He made a small gesture - cupping his hands as though making a snowball... or crumpling a piece of paper - and Sarah realized what he meant.

He was going to destroy that recording. Ellie's wonderful approval of Sarah and Chuck and acceptance of an implied cover story was a double edged sword. Without knowing that her brother had nearly been lost forever to "protective custody" and thinking that she was some sort of protected witness, Ellie had given her blessing to taking Chuck with her if she had to leave.

As uplifting as it had been in the moment, Ellie had just inadvertently gift wrapped the perfect cover story for "disappearing" her brother.

Sarah and Casey shared a small nod and he released his blinds to return to hiding behind them. Ellie opened her front door and saw Chuck and Devon with drinks in their hands and one on the table for her.

"Pour another one fiancé, I brought a bridesmaid to celebrate with us!"

Devon stood to pour another drink with a beaming smile and an "Outstanding!" while Chuck looked at Sarah peeking over Ellie's shoulder with an I-told-you-so grin on his face that make the corners of her own mouth turn up.

Ellie stepped inside leaving Sarah still standing on the doorstep with Chuck studying her every move. Her fight or flight response evident on her face.

She knew she didn't belong here. Didn't know if she would be here to see Ellie married to Devon. If Chuck would be here to see it.

She knew she didn't deserve it. But Sarah tentatively stepped across the threshold anyway.

She'd take what she could get.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: I addressed why and how Sarah instigated the idea of robbing the Buy More last time but neglected to mention that one of my favorite Sarah-isms of the entire show is when Casey drives Chuck to the warehouse / hangar where they have reconstructed the innards of the Buy More for examination. When the doors open to reveal Sarah, Chuck in disbelief says "YOU robbed the Buy More?" and she just quirks her mouth and gives a little half-shrug like she didn't just move heaven and earth to protect him. The moment itself cannot be improved upon so I tried to show what went into her motivations to do it instead.

Also, from last time: The knives I have in mind for Sarah The Enforcer are pretty much the "Saber Claws" that Riddick uses in the Riddick franchise. Who's your money on in a game of "Who's the better killer?"

You'll have to wait until "Santa Claus" to resolve your concerns about the subtle differences between Sarah dispatching Lizzie and executing Mauser. Honestly, how many people who know Chuck is the Intersect can be allowed to live? (For those who don't know, "Loose Lips Sink Ships" is an actual WWII era slogan from the War Advertising Council / US Office of War Information - Wow, right? These entities existed. May you live in interesting times... - and was meant to warn against unguarded talk of possible use by the enemy.)

Regarding the events of these chapters, I also love that, when Casey arrives at the helipad, the very moment Chuck says "There's really some serious spy fighting going on" it suddenly devolves into hair pulling. Chick fights are vicious!

I thought about making the amount of thought between floors more uniform but then figured Sarah is getting her game face on. Much less reflection when she's turning herself into The Enforcer.

Yes, the helipad is the same building as the Pilot! Yes, its the Marriott (since closed). Yes, its fourteen stories tall (and let's assume open elevator access to all floors and remember, the "dings" start at "2"). Yes, people have survived falls from such heights... if you know "how to fall". Yes, until recently, Los Angeles had an ordinance that said all "high rises" MUST have helipads. (Learned that after looking at a Google sat maps thinking "How many helipads could there be in downtown LA anyway?")

But, even with all that superfluous research, I'll ask you to kindly just go with the same suspension of disbelief utilized when viewing the episode. Much like Lizzie shooting the gun out of Sarah's hand. (Also, Sarah never heard the name Lizzie on-screen until Chuck entered the Weinerlicious saying it with questionable acoustics, then she used it as though it was very familiar to her. Granted, Sarah may have simply read Lizzie's Pita Palace name tag but, just for fun, I'll stick with the idea that "flirting with Lester is a memorable red flag".)

Much of the show is built upon this "fish out of water" idea of keeping Chuck's dangerous, hidden life from destroying his safer "real" life (even though he is destined for and eventually becomes more fulfilled in his role in the "dangerous" world). I thought it would be interesting to see that separation from Sarah's side of things. Thinking of her own real life only existing inside Chuck's apartment (or at least the "bubble" of his "real life".)

Chuck just threw it out there (like I sometimes do) but I was surprised to find that "Bipolar Bears" exist in various aspects of pop-culture but I was thinking of The Tick animated series. Don't look for it. Bipolar Bear (the superhero with the best of intentions if only he could bring himself to leave the house) appears for like eight seconds.

Update on slower updates: No promises on update timing - though I'd like to close out Book One soon. Writing is much slower due to real life priorities so I hope you all can stick with me. If you do, I will stick with the story!

Book One is soon drawing to a close. "Wait a minute," you say. "Marlin WAS the end of Season One!" Yes, indeed it was. But I have always considered this first "phase" of the show (mostly themed around Chuck being swept up in events prior to trying to take some control of his life back) to extend into "First Date". Sorry! (Not sorry.)

Also, sneak peek preview: in my mind, S2 unofficially ends with "First Kill" ("Take off your watch") and, even with the subsequent time jump, "Colonel" and "Ring" (I) is the unofficial beginning of S3.

So, there will be another installment or two and probably a mid-story epilogue of sorts to bridge us between Book One and Book Two. I decided when I started I was only going to write one fan fiction, its just going to be a hellalong one...


	30. XXX: The Beast of America (1:9)

...wherein the various machinations of two adversaries - an evil man cloaked as a patriot pitted against a madman with the best of intentions - and the moves of all of their unwitting pawns begin to converge...

Canon Reference: Flashback scene prior to the beginning of Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: One chapter, 7K-plus with 1K-plus of rambling notes. FYI - I currently have no idea how many "parts" might be required to complete this arc but this one covers A LOT of ground and is NOT light reading so plan accordingly.

A/N: That's right, its not abandoned!

Real life (nothing life-threatening) has taken precedence over my writing efforts but I have been picking at it here and there as time allows and inspiration demands. I do regret that I haven't had the opportunity to respond to those of you who graciously reviewed the last couple of chapters. I thank you all for all your kind words but some of your reviews were particularly touching, supportive and inspirational. I'll do my best but, given a choice, hopefully I am correct in my assumption that you'd all rather I devote what little bandwidth I have to writing more story than individual responses.

I have quite a lot envisioned to pack into the events of the incredibly rich "First Date" (I love this episode) and to close out Book One of this story. This is the first of two prologue-ish chapters for this arc. Unfortunately the first chapter here only touches on Chuck and Sarah and the next - which may also be a stand-alone - does not contain them at all. Hopefully, these chapters are entertaining and interesting in and of themselves even with their absence but, if not, hopefully the remainder will - eventually - make up for that and it will all make sense in the end.

So. Just to whet your appetites and get something out there for those so patiently waiting, here is the first chapter of a LONG arc centered around First Date. It was actually very difficult to get just right and I'm still not sure if it managed to do everything I intended. Of course I would prefer to release multiple chapters in more coherent installments but... here you go!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership or claim to CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Additionally, no ownership of the Nico Vega song _Beast_ (from which the title of this arc comes, see end notes) or any of Douglas Adams' amazing "Hitchhiker" books is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

.

Part XXX: The Beast of America, Part 1

.

* * *

.

087: The Unseen Hand

.

"The Grid... A digital frontier.

I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer.

What did they look like?

Ships? Motorcycles?

Were the circuits like freeways?

I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see.

And then one day... I got in.

And the world was more beautiful than I ever dreamed…

.

…but also more dangerous than I ever imagined."

.

Kevin Flynn, TRON: Legacy

.

* * *

.

Moscow; Sunday, April 13, 2008; 11:35 am

.

Boris Tokarev took the bus alongside a throng of other shoppers and tourists, disembarked with them at the Krasnaya Ploshchad stop just a few hundred feet from the Moskva River and began walking north west as instructed. In old Russian, Krasnaya Ploshchad meant "Beautiful Square" but it was now synonymous with the post-revolution name of his destination.

Red Square. The symbolic heart of communist Moscow.

The "square" was more of a diamond, its most famous and recognizable landmark at its southeastern side. The outer walls of the Kremlin were on his left as he approached and walked past that landmark, St. Basil's Cathedral, on his right.

Boris paused to admire the colorful onion domes, meant to evoke the image of flames reaching up into the sky, and take several photographs as any good tourist would. The package was to be in place by 11:45 with the drop cancelled if he was spotted milling around beforehand.

He had considered a reconnaissance run earlier in the day. An attempt to spot his contact making the drop. He was confident he could avoid detection but, after six months of shadow games, he was desperate to get back in the good graces of this particular contact and didn't dare risk it. Nor did he risk leaving his only remaining lifeline exposed for a second longer than absolutely necessary.

So he briskly made his way to the front entrance where the bronze sculpture of Minin and Pozharsky, heroes of the Time of Troubles, kept a watchful eye over the south east end of Red Square from their position in front of the grand cathedral.

Although it was April and the last of the accumulations of winter snows in the region had melted, there was a dusting of recent snow from the prior evening creeping up every vertical surface in drifts due to the swirling winds. Boris wore a knit cap over his normally wavy hair, recently shorn short to better accommodate various wigs, and surveyed the square with crystal blue eyes.

He hung his knapsack over the post by the gate, noting the small plastic case tucked between the post and the electrical call box - or whatever it was next to the gate - and partly obscured by the English language sign listing the museum hours for the "Intercession Cathedral", before taking several steps back to take pictures of the cathedral with the statue in the foreground.

One of the most heavily patrolled public monument and government complexes on earth and his contact had chosen it for a drop site. Of course, after such a long period of radio silence and playing cat and mouse with FULCRUM and a possible associated group while operating off the grid, he welcomed any assistance regardless of the circumstances. When he stepped back to his bag, not wanting to draw attention by leaving it unattended for too long, he scrounged through it for a stick of chewing gum and clumsily "dropped" his camera in the process.

He removed his gloves to reach over the rail, returning to a standing position with a mass of black cloth and black plastic in his hand. He smiled sheepishly at the Russian patrolman approaching to tell him to remove his bag from the rail even as Boris did so. His intentions now made clear, and with a parting glare, the Russian officer returned to his patrol as Boris shouldered his bag, carefully maintained his innocent smile and resumed his sight-seeing.

The cathedral had been confiscated and converted to a museum nearly a century ago and Boris stepped inside the gates to peruse the museum for twenty minutes as instructed. As he did so he pocketed the case wrapped inside his glove. He had retrieved it along with his camera which he was still making a big show of checking for damage from the drop. A less seasoned agent's heart would be pounding at nearly having to abandon his connection if the officer had tried to detain him but Boris was systematically mentally reviewing his possible escape routes.

It was just a different, more constructive, form of panic.

In his wandering of the cathedral museum, Boris found the blindspot in the scans of the surveillance cameras that he had been informed of and opened the case. Again, as instructed, he used his true birthdate as a combination - yet another indication of the power his contact wielded - then he discarded the case in a trash can and kept its contents.

A disk-like electronic device of some kind he pocketed, then he placed the earpiece with no obvious corresponding receiver or transmitter into his ear canal.

At precisely 12:10 it crackled to life with his next instruction from a distorted, digitally altered voice.

"Make your way up the square... Boris."

.

* * *

.

Boris casually made his way out of the museum, exited St. Basil's and moved north west up the square in the direction of the State Historical Museum. The opulent and always crowded department store called the GUM was on his right and the Kremlin was still on his left as he approached Lenin's Mausoleum in front of the Kremlin marking the center of the square. He took his time not knowing his destination, and continued snapping the occasional touristy photograph.

"Pay your respects," the distorted voice in his earpiece instructed. Boris quickly puzzled it out, then casually made his way toward Lenin's tomb.

"Where are you?" Boris whispered in frustration, resisting the urge to look around the square any more obviously than he had been, not knowing or caring if his comm device registered his speech.

"Everywhere," came the ominous response. "Nowhere. _Where_ I am is none of your concern. _Who_ I am is none of your concern. What may be of interest is that I've decided to give you a chance to redeem yourself," the voice informed him.

"What? Redeem myself for-"

"Why," the voice in his ear sternly interrupted, "did you send the... my package... to that man?"

It was the question Boris had been expecting ever since he had informed his contact, the man he had been relying on as his ace in the hole as he tried to take on an entire enemy spy organization without a net, that the information he had been meant to retrieve had been sent to a college friend.

When he had returned - revived and secretly reinstated despite being officially disavowed - Boris knew his contact would want to be informed and had hoped he could still be a resource. But when this mysterious man correctly identified the friend in question their communication had abruptly ended and had not resumed until instructions were given for this drop four days ago.

"It was the only choice. You'd understand if you knew him," Boris offered.

The response, as distorted as it was, could best be described as a gleeful growl. The mystery man he knew only as 'Hunter' was clearly furious and doing his best to hold himself together while also convincing "Boris" to do what he needed. By guilt or intimidation... either would do. And so he measured his words carefully and amplified the intensity of his delivery without raising his voice.

"I have, literally at my fingertips, the means to sound a general alarm and distribute a bulletin to all security and Russian Army personnel in the immediate area informing them that a former CIA Agent sometimes known as Bryce Larkin is currently standing at the very doorstep of the Kremlin. Do. Not. Fuck. With me."

It was suddenly clear to Bryce why the man he knew only as Hunter had chosen this location. It was both a demonstration of power and a threat. If that bulletin, which Bryce had no doubt was not a bluff, contained his picture he had little hope of escaping the square much less the country. Bryce continued to count military and security personnel and assess their positions as Hunter gathered himself before continuing.

"So it was your plan all along to double cross me? To send _my_ intel to this friend? The same one you let believe you betrayed him out of spite when it was to keep him away from Omaha?"

"What do you know about Omaha?" Bryce Larkin asked defensively. Hunter paused but recovered after a few moments, unable or unwilling to maintain his aggressive tone.

"I saw the interviews. Saw what your Professor did."

Of all the questions that leapt to his mind, "How?" was the one Bryce asked incredulously.

"His interviews. Your interview in your friend's place. It was on his computer," the mysterious man said simply, as though the mere act of storing information of any kind on any computer was synonymous with him knowing it. It may as well have been true.

Bryce had seen what he could do. He had contacted Bryce in an Internet cafe while he was in full disguise and no intelligence agency or terrorist organization hunting him had a whiff of his whereabouts. It was why he so desperately wanted the man's help. And part of why he didn't question the man's assertion that the intel contained in The Intersect was somehow his.

"I was almost - despite my better judgment - touched by your compassion. But then you double-crossed me. What did you intend to do with him once he... was exposed to the... information?" the man continued in Bryce's earpiece, hesitating over masking the nature of their discussion.

"Nothing. Keep him safe. He's the best person I've ever known."

Hunter scoffed.

"Seems a suspect way of showing appreciation of such a man... Boris," he taunted.

"I had _no_ time," Bryce harshly whispered in frustration even as he snapped a few more photos to maintain his cover. Everyone he cared about had questioned his motives and his frustration was partly because he knew how lacking and indefensible his explanation truly was. No one appreciated the struggle of it. Of living with what he had done.

"And I know nothing about you, 'Hunter'. I was shot in the chest - thought I was dying. I admit, I doubted your motives. He was the only person I could think of who I _knew_ would do the right thing. Whatever the cost."

Bryce thought back to the night he had stolen The Intersect. There was more, of course. His intention of apologizing to Chuck for getting him kicked out of school. His intention of apologizing to Sarah for being a shitty... whatever they were besides partners. His intention of duplicating the data before determining any ulterior motives Hunter may have had. Just in case.

But, despite his outward bravado, all that had been thrown out the window as he lay dying and looked up to see the gaping maw of a sneering John Casey's gun barrel.

If Hunter's stories of an army of Intersect soldiers were true - and they had been sufficient to convince him to steal the Intersect in the first place - and the only copy of the Intersect was in the device on his arm that night, Bryce's only thought was of ditching the intel somewhere it could never be found. And there had been a maelstrom of regrets which had led his thoughts to a justification that the only known person in the world who could safely handle the Intersect was also the rare person who could be trusted to treat it with the respect it deserved.

And so Bryce embedded the files from Hunter's compression device in a joke email intended to contain his possibly post-humous apology for what he had done to Chuck at Stanford when it seemed he was going to fail. The joke password that only his friend would know. The joke that reminded him of what great friends they had once been and made any words he conceived for such an apology seem empty. He never did find adequate words.

It wasn't even a letter not sent, it was just the envelope. If he had never even attempted to find the words, or had already found them and had completed the package, he never would have had that envelope ready to fill with the dangerous contents he had delivered.

"Yet you ruined his life," Hunter reminded.

Yeah... there was that.

"I know," Bryce sighed.

"You brought him into your world when you already destroyed him once to keep him out of it. You knew he couldn't be one of you," Hunter sneered.

"I just- ...I didn't want him to have to do what I've done. To see what I have seen," Bryce admitted.

"Didn't think he could cut it?" Hunter offered.

"No. He could have. Maybe," Bryce sighed.

That was the conundrum of Chuck Bartowski. Over the last few months Bryce had thought back on his time as Chuck's friend in college. Their drunken conversations about Douglas Adams and the socio-political commentary contained in his farcical masterpiece.

Among those insights, the concept that no person who wanted to rule, by the very nature of desiring it, could be trusted with the responsibility of such power. Chuck Bartowski would never _want_ such responsibility yet was, without a doubt, the only person Bryce had ever known who he could stomach the idea of having such power.

"He was almost as good with computers as you. Just brilliant, all around. Fairly athletic though he never really let anyone see that. And he was - still is - the most decent man I've ever known. He could do anything," Bryce continued. Hunter let him plow on as Bryce began to fully realize for the first time exactly what he had done.

"And he would do anything if he thought it was the right thing to do. He would have found it in him to do the right thing. I know he would. But they would have made many things _seem_ like the "right thing to do". He would have been the best of us. And that would have gotten him killed. For some noble cause, because he always puts other people ahead of himself. Or, if not killed, it would have eaten him away inside. Hollowed him out. Ruined him more than I did. We all had good intentions when we started... but none of us would have had as far to fall as him."

Hunter considered this with equal parts compassionate fear and paternal pride. His son would have been the best of them. Could still be. But Hunter had seen the same things Bryce had seen. How this world devoured people and laughed at best intentions.

"Would you make the same choices again? Knowing what you know now?" he asked Bryce.

Bryce had been preparing his defense of his actions for months. Ever since emerging from that stasis pod and his conversation with Sarah. It was for the greater good. Chuck was the only option. When the simple fact of the matter was, faced with his own death, he had panicked. And it was unclear whether Hunter was referring to the Intersect or the manner in which Bryce had tried to shield Chuck the first time at Stanford. It didn't matter. The answer was the same.

"No," Bryce stated simply. "It should have died with me. And I don't know what I would have done differently at school but just... something."

The mysterious man was somewhat placated that Bryce had admitted, as much as he ever would, that he had made a rash judgment, before speaking again.

"Good. Now we can begin," Hunter's tone had softened but his words grew more harsh and slightly less veiled. "That same man who shot you is now his keeper..." he let the thought trail off and let Bryce consider the danger that Charles was in.

Hunter knew the players.

The puppet masters from experience, the puppets from their files.

He knew Beckman as well as he knew anyone he had never met in person. She was stern and cold but not unnecessarily cruel. She had sought him out when they began the latest round of Intersect development years ago. For his help or as a continuation of the manhunt he was not sure at the time. He had, prior to that, gone underground when he thought the project was gaining momentum again and his secret efforts helped to derail it several times. But that was after he and his wife had made their deal to disappear into the real world to protect their unborn daughter as much as themselves. How quickly he had fallen back into his wife's world. The one _she_ had tried to shield _him_ from.

Dr. Zarnow, who his son had recently exposed as a traitor, had vouched for the contributions of himself and Perseus purely based on their research. Years ago, once Zarnow lobbied for his involvement (likely hoping to steal the Intersect even then), Beckman had allowed him to work remotely with her teams and thereby allowed him access to the intel he so desperately needed. But she was part of the machine and had the means and will to act decisively.

Graham shared none of her good traits and all of her bad. And had his own means to act decisively.

"How safe is your friend in the care of... that woman's attack dog? And worse, alongside your old partner - your old flame - your boss' favorite killer..."

Hunter's voice became more sneering as he continued describing the woman he deemed a fox in the henhouse. The predator lurking among his children, "...playing house with this friend of yours. Biding her time until your boss decides -"

"She's not -" Bryce blurted out but then hesitated not wanting to anger Hunter with anything he would perceive as a lie but also knowing that the man did not have the full measure of Sarah Walker. Especially the Sarah Walker he had last seen.

"She is. She's as deadly as you seem to know. But that's not _all_ she is."

Hunter considered the absurdity of that statement. He knew John Casey was among the most dangerous men alive. A man once dedicated to honor and duty - still a spy, and such traits are still a dangerous thing when the strings are pulled by the wrong people, but a good man - until something caused him to become completely unpredictable before vanishing from the face of the Earth.

Then he reemerged, began working for Beckman and only showed some hopeful signs that some conscience still existed there. But generally speaking he was every bit the man who had put a bullet in Bryce Larkin's chest without hesitation or remorse when Bryce carried out their first attempt at hamstringing the latest Intersect operation.

Sarah Walker was another matter.

He knew her by many other names and - like Graham's other "specials" - had even encoded Intersect files with reference to her with a unique identifier if, like him, you knew the key name to link them all. If John Casey was among the most dangerous people in the world, she was the standard against which they were measured. Graham's Enforcer.

But then Bryce, as flawed as he was, had surprised him by having some fragment of his soul remaining. Maybe she would too. Yet Bryce may have just been blinded by the woman's undeniable beauty. As he feared his son would be. Whatever Sarah Walker may be, she was still, at her core, a spy. A liar and an assassin.

A younger version of himself had suffered the same fate. And he was still trapped by his undying love for her. If he was right about her still being alive, he was still following a shadow who clearly didn't want to be found. Or feared the consequences of breaking her cover. If the latter, he had to help her.

"You're a fool," Hunter said. And Bryce heard the bite in the man's words, directed as much at Bryce as himself, just before he heard the distorted sound of a dejected sigh.

"I hope you're right," Hunter continued, one fool to another, "Or your friend will pay the price. But now for the reason I brought you here."

"Yeah, why Russia?" Bryce asked, assuming there was a reason other than threatening him on the doorstep of the Kremlin.

"I just needed you to come to me. I have business here."

"What business?" Bryce asked. So he _was_ here. Bryce figured it was just as likely that he had a courier make the drop and was speaking to him from some white sand beach somewhere but this mysterious force was somewhere nearby. At least in Russia. And Bryce discretely scanned the square for him.

"I'm looking for something..."

It was why he wanted the Intersect data once Graham had frozen him out of the project and introduced his original failure - his worst mistake - and proposed the visual interface as a possible solution. It was why he had been involved at all before that...

Why Beckman had accepted his remote contributions as a codename only asset...

Why the Intersect, a system intended for computer-based pattern recognition of intelligence, even _had_ a visual interface compatible with Charles' brain in the first damn place.

It was his backdoor. His portal. He said it was for analyst error checking and cross reference coding of inputs - and he deliberately engineered the computerized version to support that clunky process - but it was truthfully only so he himself could visually process all inputs. Expand his vision. Continue to refine his own Intersect and continue his search. If only he hadn't been so focused on a means to find her, used his own son's unwitting scans as a means to resolve some frustrating technical issues, maybe their son would not be in the predicament he was now.

"...Something for which I have been searching the entire world for a long, long time now..."

Then Graham revived the same mothballed project that had nearly killed the Intersect in its crib and created something he had only ever intended to for himself. Something he never intended to risk on another human mind that had ravaged a friend's mind beyond hope. And then that damn professor had stumbled upon one of the only people in the world capable of effectively hosting their bastardized version of his invention. Practically tailored for him, in fact.

"...at the expense of everything else I ever loved, cared about or believed in..."

His son.

His son drawn into the dangerous world he had left to shield him and his sister from.

Eleanor - his brave, beautiful, brilliant Eleanor - had done such an amazing job keeping them alive and thriving even as he botched the details of seeing to their welfare. He paid off the house and took care of the taxes but neglected the utilities, which Ellie had been paying from the house account for two years anyway. When he simply forgot to fund the household account for several months it set off a chain of events that ended with CFDS opening a case on his children.

He had joked with his wife in happier times about Einstein not being able - or not bothering - to remember his phone number. The Intersect seemed like a miracle drug, but it had its side-effects. It made him even less capable in the real world while he maintained a laser-focus on the task at hand. And his judgement regarding practical real world matters had never been the best anyway. It was amazing the things, in retrospect, that he himself had taken for granted or thought should be obvious to everyone else.

For example, he simply didn't consider that other adults would not recognize his daughter's amazing sense of responsibility far beyond her years. Her wisdom and strength in addition to her brilliant mind. He wondered if she would ever know how immensely proud of her she was. Or if he would ever see her again at all.

He often wondered if he should never have left. Or should have taken his children into hiding with him while he continued his quest. But if his judgment was that flawed due to those early versions of The Intersect that had taxed his mind too much, maybe it was better he wasn't around them. Maybe he was the wrong person for the crusade he had undertaken.

But there was no one else who cared.

"...I've managed to bring down organizations and threats you only heard whispers of..."

He had at least managed to sneak back for a few of Charles' cross country and swim meets in high school. Charles always did prefer more solitary pursuits than his sister. He had never seen Eleanor play volleyball before she abandoned athletics in favor of academic pursuits and simple survival. They both had their mother's athleticism and a lean frame both parents shared, though their mother was proportionately far stronger than him. Eleanor definitely inherited her mother's will. Charles was more like him and he felt guilty for that.

He wandered the world for much of the next few years but had managed to make it back for both his children's college graduations - just a face in the crowd milling among other proud parents. He had been so proud of his daughter four years before, completing a college degree while raising and providing for her younger brother. And again just the weekend prior to Charles' graduation as she completed medical school. Well on her way to becoming a brilliant neurologist he had made sure to be there to at least hear someone call out the name they shared. The only thing that still connected them in any meaningful way.

"...Tried to do it the way... the way it should be done. Like you think your foolish friend might have done..."

Eleanor had done it all on her own while essentially acting as a single mother, ensuring her brother missed out on nothing. He couldn't even help finagle a scholarship for either of his children. He had tried but such things were frustratingly analog with too many eyes and hands on the results but both his children had earned those too. On their own.

His feeble contribution was to adjust her student loans for medical school so that the interest was applied as a debit. A subtle adjustment. Who really scrutinized those blood-sucking account statements, anyway? If anyone ever caught and corrected the error he would do something more drastic.

"...Not as part of one man's quest for power like you and your former partner have so blindly done in the past as your Director builds his power base. But my primary goal eludes me at every turn..."

The man who had abandoned his children in an ill-conceived quest to reform their shattered family had wandered the campus of his own alma mater content in the knowledge that his children had made wonderful lives for themselves.

He had seen Eleanor become a doctor - forgoing her dream schools although she had been accepted to every one to stay nearby and see to it that her brother completed high school without the burdens she had shouldered - and was prepared to see his son following in his footsteps.

Graduate school was a possibility - Charles shared his interest in the academic and theoretical that had led him to graduate school where he had been recruited for a joint US/UK skunk works project - but with the aptitude he had shown to earn his own scholarship Charles could write his own ticket.

He had waited for Charles' name to be called and barely noticed something was amiss when he heard the names Bartrum and Barwicki. He realized something was wrong when he heard two Bascombs and a Bascotti but only fully appreciated the situation when the names started to begin with C.

"..._That_ is why I needed that intel. Your improvisation has cost me dearly..."

When you begin to question your strategy you can either retreat or double down.

Once he discovered Professor Fleming's ties to the CIA and Project Omaha - and his son's possible identification as a candidate - he renewed his efforts to tear it all down. Once he extracted what he needed.

He first disrupted their efforts, then offered his help even as they pursued him, either suspecting his involvement or desperate for his help with a fix. He thought expediting the process by dangling the promise of a computerized Intersect and borrowing the intelligence it was fed would do the trick to complete his own mission.

Much later he thought the friend of his son who had been recruited into the CIA and who had used a well-intentioned betrayal of that friendship to save him in the only way he could conceive could be trusted to do the right thing.

He had miscalculated - failed to account for unknown variables - on both counts.

"...You have forced me to pursue alternative means to obtain the information I need..."

He had been so proud to see Charles attending Stanford. His son was so much like his father. But rather than navigating his life more happily, his son seemed doomed to the same fate in more ways than one.

Charles was now both saddled with the burden of the Intersect and seemingly on the verge of repeating the mistakes he had made so many years ago. Protected by a gorgeous but ruthless spy.

A beautiful killer much like the one his younger self had been unable to resist falling in love with and who he dared to think had loved him in return. Then she had proven it when she turned her back on her former life for him, and their family, and conspired with him to hide from the government for twelve - was it twelve? - wonderful years. Until that one last mission to correct his worst mistake that was eating him alive. And then she was lost to the world of shadows and whispers from which she came for well over a decade.

Had it been that long? His accurate accounting of the time was no longer dependable. His mind, as superhuman as it was in some ways, no longer worked that way.

And still… he hunted.

"...to do things I never intended to do," Hunter finished in barely a whisper.

"What could possibly be worth all that?" Bryce asked, interrupting his reminiscence.

What could be worth all he had missed?

What could be worth sacrificing his health, sanity and probably his life to find?

What could be worth becoming a stranger to your children by pursuing the same slim hope of making things right that had allowed the shadows to reclaim and devour his wife?

The digitally distorted chuckle in Bryce's earpiece was... disturbing.

"You're right, of course. Perhaps... perhaps you're not as big a fool as I believed."

Bryce saw him now, he was relatively sure. The shudder of the man's shoulders accompanying his laugh had given him away. Across the square, in front of the GUM where he could easily escape into the crowded mall. A man with dark glasses and a bushy mustache and beard. Likely fake. A grey fedora, grey overcoat and likely unnecessary cane made him completely unremarkable. If he shed them in the crowd there would be no way to tail him which, Bryce realized, was exactly what the man intended.

It was one of those Moscow spring days that mocked you as the temperature dropped even as the sun rose higher in the sky and Bryce pulled up the collar of his jacket. He locked eyes with the strange man from under the brim of the man's hat as the man stood stock still even though he knew he had been spotted - or would have locked eyes if not for the glasses - but he knew the man was returning his gaze.

"What do I need to do?" Bryce asked.

"Save your friend," Hunter answered. "Just save your friend. I can't have any more lives destroyed by this thing."

He finally had a sliver of a trail to follow. As much because an equally mysterious force - a phantom much like him maneuvering more in the material world that the virtual - was sweeping away the trail as though deliberately trying to thwart him. It was the absence of certain details that stood out to his Intersect as much as a series of clues would. Or so he told himself. He couldn't entertain the idea that he might be mistaken. If he let go of this tenuous trail, it had all been for nothing. And it would be like losing her all over again.

He couldn't fight on two fronts. He had encountered disastrous results when dividing his focus like that. Focus... He needed to focus. All this sentimentality would not help him save either of his targets. He would be lucky to wake up tomorrow with a clear understanding of where he was and why. He couldn't risk this on his own erratic abilities. He desperately needed Bryce Larkin to prove his friendship in the only way he could conceive to protect his son while he continued his search.

"How?" Bryce asked.

"The new... it's set to go online in a few weeks. All preliminary tests are done and every indication is that your boss intends to move immediately to the stage I warned you about. With the worst of the worst. He doesn't want anything else getting in his way."

What Hunter had first warned Bryce about. Human testing. An army of Intersect agents.

"I can't infiltrate that room again. You may as well ask me to visit the big man's office with no prep and no gear," Bryce nodded slightly toward the Kremlin and the President's office inside.

"I know. But you don't need to this time. You only need to prep the surrounding area. The cooling systems and the projection systems. And you'll have my help. As before. I'll take care of the rest. One key component has been crudely replicated. But it will, unfortunately, do the trick," Hunter said.

Someone had replicated The Key. Or tried to. The component that had caused this entire mess. It was a crude substitute but good enough for Graham's purposes. And Graham had conveniently ensured the latest version required his personal authentication for upload. He could end this misuse of his creation in pursuit of power with one move. The people who made it would be present too. It was human nature to see their work in action. It was... regrettable. But he had to be sure they didn't try again.

Graham had kept the existence of The Key and his intended use for it a secret from everyone else involved in the Intersect program. Without access to the new Intersect code he couldn't know what other changes Graham had made but there was only one man who could have led Graham down a path that involved The Key. One man who could have given him the idea and some rudimentary understanding of its design. The man had built an empire on a rudimentary understanding of his ideas and relied on young, hungry, more talented engineers to realize them.

And Hunter had been unsurprised when he reached out to the shadowy organization known as FULCRUM - his only option for the intel that he needed - as his alter-ego hidden behind a computer screen and all but confirmed his suspicions.

Ted Roark had stolen many of his ideas from their early collaboration in graduate school and profited from them. But that was OK. They had intended to go into business together and he had vanished from the face of the earth when recruited leaving Roark with just the fragments of his concepts to be reverse engineered. And any retaliation had been served long ago by skimming Roark Industries corporate accounts to fund his search for years.

But he could kill two birds with one stone. The Cipher was known to all involved - white hats and black hats - and he intended to use it both to resolve Graham's interference once and for all and drive the US intelligence community to escalate the war on FULCRUM. Rather than simply outing Roark's possible involvement, he could use that distraction to also help obscure his own moves.

"Another key component is causing a delay," he continued. "I need you to replace that component with the device I provided. Secondary laboratory. Far less security. Then leave it to me to prevent what we discussed and eliminate the ability to reproduce your friend's results."

Prevent what they discussed, Bryce considered.

The worst of the worst.

Graham must have found a way to create his Intersect army from the most vicious recruits he could find. Or remove any conscience they might have. Then endow them with superhuman capabilities and bend them to his will.

Either way, a ruthless man with a ruthless army... Men and women tailored after his and Sarah's worst selves.

Sarah was different now. Maybe he was too.

It was the stuff of science fiction stories but after all, Bryce knew a man with a database of all the nation's secrets uploaded into his brain.

He could read between the lines. Hunter intended to wipe out the Intersect and everyone capable of replicating Graham's Project Omaha. Bryce had no idea what Graham's end game was but it couldn't be allowed. And he - and Sarah - and all the others - would finally be free.

Which left only one other concern.

"How will that save my friend?"

"It will maintain his uniqueness until I can perfect a way to... resolve the situation without harming him. I clean up my messes. But if he is no longer unique-"

"He'll be expendable," Bryce finished. That thought alone clinched his decision for him.

"Precisely. Our less-friendly friend hasn't forgotten your deception at your University. You cost him as well. Delayed him in achieving his primary goal as well. He is even less forgiving than me. Your Professor has already been sanctioned..."

That was news to Bryce but not shocking.

"...I expect he is surprised you have not met the same fate yet. I expect he now appreciates that your college friend is what he was told - by you - that he was not. And I happen to know that your friend's two keepers were less than forthcoming about that. He likely has something in mind to punish them as well. But you are in the unique position of being capable of doing something that I need to be done. If you do this for me, I will assist you in your mission. I have been watching. You're lucky to be alive. I think you could use a friend."

"Are we friends?"

"I suppose not. Neither of us has that luxury."

"So who _are_ you, really?"

There was a long pause, then a crackling sigh before the question was answered.

"Just another fool," the voice in Bryce's ear said as the shattered, heartbroken, barely sane man in front of the GUM turned to enter the building, driven nearly mad by years of strain from multiple versions of his creation stretching his mind to the breaking point.

His strategic mind was still intact. Enhanced even, over the years. When he could focus. Even now he felt his mind slipping from the strain.

But he thought he had succeeded in directing Agent Larkin's focus and decided to give the Agent a bread crumb. One that, when he inevitably investigated it, would lead to a trail that would crystalize the Agent's belief in everything said here today.

Not his true name, that would give away too much.

But rather what he had become.

His true face.

That of the creator of the abomination known as The Intersect.

The man paused and turned his head slightly, saying before disappearing into the crowded building, "But, do this, and from now on you can call me... Orion."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Sorry for the uncharacteristically "short" update (which may become more characteristic - shorter chapters/updates to maintain some momentum - even though such an approach feels "piece meal" to me) and especially sorry for no Chuck or especially no Sarah. I'll update ASAP. Emphasis on the "P".

However, this chapter - primarily the backstory that you barely see - was EXTREMELY complicated even though I stayed vague about some of the historical details. It's deliberately scattered and convoluted (as its from Stephen's POV) and you don't HAVE to fully digest it all but I think it holds up in-universe if you do and I think all the necessary pieces are there. I'll have to ask your forgiveness if I end up later violating anything generically laid out here, especially when we reach "Dream Job". I'm pretty sure I missed something...

And did you read that right? Is Orion working with FULCRUM?!

Sort of. He needs fresh intel more than he needs oxygen. And we see when he is first introduced in "Predator" that he is more than willing to kill. I didn't include it in the disclaimers because its not a direct reference but Stephen's disguised appearance here is loosely based on V's disguise as William Rookwood in V for Vendetta (the persona V chose to reveal the depths of the government conspiracy to Inspector Finch - yes, I like this movie!).

The full extent of Stephen's involvement with a man named Ted Roark, a project involving a UK counterpart, and his other involvement with the US government - including exactly how he participated in the triumvirate of Zarnow-Orion-Perseus - well... It's a lot to navigate. Probably enough for an entire story of its own.

At this point, to me, reserved but good-natured Stephen Bartowski is a very different entity than the cold-blooded, unforgiving Orion. Orion is quite focused on his cause. And quite mad. But the thing you must remember is that much of this web of intrigue begins - not necessarily with the Intersect; its just the McGuffin - but with a young Stephen Bartowski and an agent named Mary Gunter.

A ruthless agent who left the spy world because she fell in love. How the two of them obscured their existence, started a family and escaped from the spy world only to be sucked back in. In another world, Mary IS Sarah. Stephen IS Chuck. And their story is as much prophecy as cautionary tale. I'll probably let Mary tell their story at a later date. Likely in pieces and likely to Sarah. But the important thing to remember is Stephen's final message to his son, his last (non-voiceover) appearance (in Ring, Part II) and his final words which, to me, are at the heart of explaining absolutely everything:

"I did it all for her."

.

* * *

.

Crazy Band Names and Bad Ass Chicks:

And now... Trivia Time!

Let's talk music for a second (or longer, actually). The title of this (X-part) arc is from the amazing song "_Beast_" by the band Nico Vega (Parental Advisory for explicit lyrics depending upon version).

First, the band name is like a Jethro Tull thing (a completely random reference to an 18th century agriculturist cooked up by a promoter without the band's input; made infamous by Owen Wilson's psych evaluation in _Armageddon_) or a Pink Floyd thing (originally named Pink Floyd Sound after blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council; the protagonist of _The_ _Wall_ later being named "Pink"), where no one in the band is named that.

However, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, it is a real person. (That's right! Did you know the southern rock band is named after their high school gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who strictly enforced school rules about boys wearing their hair too long and playing their music too loud? The legend of his tyranny became overblown after a time.)

Nico Vega is the name of the original drummer / founder's grandmother. The band kept the name as a tribute to him and to her and to highlight the dangers of prescription drugs (she died from the side effects of anti-depressants - not judging here, its just an interesting tid-bit).

Trivia aside, if you're like me, you hadn't heard of the song or the band until someone somewhere (who wasn't paid nearly enough to do so) put together a commercial for the video game "Bioshock: Infinite" featuring a special version of the song "_Beast_".

If you're still like me, you heard that song in that commercial and just had to find out more about it and especially the bad ass singing it.

If you're still still like me, the first verse comes in like a freight train and you may have initially thought the singer was a guy...

The lead singer of Nico Vega is the very talented Aja Volkman, (not some Axl Rose imitator as I thought for a few seconds)...

...who is also married to Imagine Dragons frontman, Dan Reynolds (and recorded an EP with him under the name Egyptian)...

...with whom she has a daughter named Arrow (I'm not a fan of weird celebrity names but that's a pretty cool one).

She's seriously talented and isn't always shredding the paint off the walls with her "power voice". Check out the two albums by Nico Vega and the shorty by Egyptian (and she has a solo project under development).

Later in this arc I'll share some thoughts about how a band can get songs included in a popular TV show FIVE times and still get screwed by episode placement but, next time, come back to find out who or what is "The Beast"...


	31. XXXI: The Beast of America (2:9)

...wherein the various machinations of two adversaries - an evil man cloaked as a patriot pitted against a madman with the best of intentions - and the moves of all of their unwitting pawns begin to converge...

Canon Reference: Pre-SERIES flashback scene, again, in preparation for Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: One chapter (really picking at this thing right now) which should have been combined with the prior chapter for a two scene "prologue" to Ep 201

Warning: Graphic violence

A/N: Just a little background chapter. Not exactly a warm Yuletide tale. Zero Chuck, zero Sarah and therefore zero Chuck &amp; Sarah in this one but I think you'll all see the relevance and we'll get back to them soon.

Acronyms: USP is a US Penitentiary, ADMAX is an Administrative Maximum Facility (aka "Supermax" Prison), DB or USDB refers to a Disciplinary Barracks (Military Prison)

FYI - I'm not (quite) as cynical about "patriotism" as the quotes herein might imply but won't bore you in this forum by climbing up on my soapbox.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. Among those quotes about patriotism, you'll recognize a couple that were used in fairly well-known Nicolas Cage movie (though I refer to the quotes themselves) along with an Iron Maiden lyric from a song about the horrors of warfare (a common theme of theirs often accompanied by some fairly disturbing imagery). See additional influences in end notes including _The Godfather_, _Soldier_, _MiB_ and _Sweeny Todd_.

.

* * *

Part XXXI: The Beast of America, Part 2

* * *

.

088: The Beast

.

* * *

.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

.

Thomas Jefferson

.

* * *

.

USP Florence ADMAX, Florence, CO; January 2007

.

The slot in the bottom of the door opened and the plastic tray slid through the outer door, across the short expanse of the vestibule floor, coming to rest against the bars of the inner door.

Laughter from outside indicated that it was another "Message Day".

The prisoner had adopted the same routine at every meal whether or not he was tipped off by laughter or taunts. He took the tray to the combination sink-toilet with the sink where the toilet tank would normally be, straddled the toilet seat facing backwards, scooped his food out in handfuls, and ran each under the cold water before shoving the food into his mouth.

There were no utensils anyway and anything masquerading as "sauce" was nowhere near tasty enough to compensate for whatever filth had been added to his meal by the guards. Even surrounded by psychos and terrorists it didn't take much urging to encourage that sort of behavior against someone like him. At least based on the "official" story.

The prisoner looked in the polished steel mirror at the weeping bandage on his cheek. He had improvised his own dressing from a strip torn from his sleeve and the original adhesive after the original bandage from the clinic left no choice but to be changed. The promised medical supplies and antibiotics had never appeared in his cell over the past week. He would have to do something desperate soon, perhaps somehow burn the infection out of his face, if he expected to survive much longer.

Not that he should expect to live much longer anyway. The encounter with the four other prisoners, all four armed with weapons only meant to _appear_ improvised while he was shackled - ankles and wrists - had made that clear. He shouldn't have encountered anyone on his way to his private recreation hour but knew it was trouble when his three escorts simply left him alone in the corridor.

There was no reason to suspect any sort of "institutional justice" so the whole charade had just been another "Message". Not all of the guards' sense of duty was for sale, but it didn't take all of them to deliver these messages from whoever he had pissed off. He knew he killed a lot of American personnel but they should all have been disavowed for their actions. They all had it coming but, even at the time, he knew he was wrecking _somebody's_ plans.

He had expected the DB at Fort Leavenworth. Something indicative of us years of unquestioning service. Not this rogues gallery of freaks and monsters. Whoever that someone was, they must have thought it was hilarious to see him surrounded by men who betrayed every ideal he ever held.

It could have run anywhere from a particularly well connected regional director to a cabinet member. He really had no way of knowing. Whoever was responsible for putting him here might possibly see that he eventually received the medical attention he required but likely only once his wound left him permanently disfigured. It was clear that someone in power had it in for him. His trial and incarceration had been an unusually opaque affair.

But he supposed that was the way it always worked for someone like him. Someone who didn't really exist except for his "official" record. All other incarnations of him were disavowed by everyone in the world.

And all because he tried to do the right thing... be the man he had once been...

One last time.

.

* * *

.

Paraguay, October 2006

.

The Specialist. That's what they requested and that's what they got. A bunch of fucking CIA spooks trying to install whatever asshole they thought they could control over the drug trade in this region.

Of course, that wasn't what he had been told. He had been told they were going to eliminate the entire leadership of the five major players in the region's drug trade. That's what he was here for. Sniper support. Overwatch. And he was stupid enough that he didn't ask any questions beyond the usual one: Will I get to kill a bunch of bad guys?

Even that had seemed less and less likely. This was an overkill mission if he had ever seen one. The twelve-man team (he made them a baker's dozen) was lying in wait in two squads. The larger group positioned around the small abandoned farm house and the outlying buildings, including a large barn and the smaller group along the long road leading to the farm buildings.

From his vantage point between the two, a rise in a wooded area over a thousand yards away from either position, he could see up the road with no obstructions and had line of sight on most of the farm. Only a small shed to the right of the road partially obscured his view of the farmhouse itself and the other buildings.

They were supposed to wait for the five different parties to arrive. The five heads of each of the most powerful criminal organizations in the region were meeting to finalize plans to consolidate their power under one cartel. Their interests were primarily drug smuggling but their extensive networks had expanded into arms and human trafficking. The Specialist was particularly offended by that last part. He was only here as a security blanket but whoever planned this raid wanted to be certain the targets were eliminated. He may not be needed but he certainly wouldn't shed a tear over anyone on the guest list.

Each party was supposed to be arriving with minimal support but, call him silly, he never trusted drug lords. Or spooks. He was prepared with a second weapon capable of turning a vehicle into a death trap. In addition to his preferred M40A3 sniper rifle he had a .50 cal M82A1A with its particularly nasty Raufoss ammo ready to go in two separate ten round magazines.

The team questioned why he didn't just stick to the .50 cal. The 82 was cumbersome enough at about thirty pounds of weapon and ammo. They had hidden their escape vehicles two days in advance and, out of an abundance of caution, decided to approach overland by night to avoid being spotted by any heat traces from overhead. They had given him a lot of shit for lugging an extra 20 lbs of .30 caliber hardware of his primary weapon, but he proved his strength by outpacing them to his position well before dawn even with the additional weight.

Amateurs.

They assumed he was just a gun nut but he wanted the options. For picking off single targets he preferred the M40 or a few other .30 cals. He could have brought more ammo for the 82 but he didn't need that kind of distance. And maybe some people didn't care about using the Raufoss shells directly against human beings but he'd prefer not to. Even against people he intended to kill. He simply preferred clean kills.

The Raufoss Mk211 Mid 0 multipurpose anti-materiel projectile shells were usually called simply "Raufoss" but, as the second most deadly thing of Scandinavian origins he had ever encountered, he preferred to call them "Candy Corn".

Each shell was almost six inches long with an armor-piercing tungsten core and packed with both explosive and incendiary components for penetrating lightly armored targets and, besides making a big damn hole, inflicting further damage to any occupants. He knew from experience that they were spectacularly useful on helicopters.

Just shooting a gas tank was rarely effective. The fuel needed to be aerosolized to ignite. The explosive and incendiary components of the Raufoss combined were capable of doing just that.

They were fucking magic.

These marvels of destruction were designated by a distinctive paint scheme on their tips. The copper jacket ended in a white cone of paint. And the very tip of that white cone had a second layer of paint marking just the tip green.

Copper-white-green. Like some kind of putrid candy corn from hell.

He was testing the action of both weapons when he saw dust kicked up at the farthest turn of the dirt road where it emerged from the trees at the top of a hill. The check point was approximately a thousand yards away - slightly beyond the M40's rated range but not enough to concern him - and The Specialist turned his long range sight to the hilltop.

There a small caravan of three vehicles, a jeep in front and back and a sedan in the middle, stopped and did not move until a second, identical three-vehicle convoy approached. Two armed men exited both of the first two jeeps and kept their rifles slung across their backs with an uneasy hand on their sidearms.

A man with longish curly black hair wearing a tan suit with a dark shirt and no tie exited the second sedan and when a man in the first sedan exited to greet him, all the guards stood down. An unarmed representative from within each sedan exited to search the two men and the cabins of their respective vehicles before taking up positions with the armed guards. The two men slipped back into their respective cars after a brief conversation and tentative handshake, and both sedans moved down the road to the farm house.

The Specialist watched as the two cars veered to opposite sides of the road to let their passengers disembark and then their drivers looped around the barn and moved the cars back to the hilltop as agreed.

Everything was "as agreed".

Each representative had sent a team to inspect the property this morning, as agreed. He and the strike team had arrived beforehand, stashed secondary weaponry around the farm (including a cumbersome package of his own their unbalanced second in command, Lynch, had hidden in the shed) and had been lying hidden the entire time.

Their quarry hadn't checked the full length of the road thoroughly enough or they would have found the three jeeps that were extremely well concealed well off the road behind a thick stand of trees.

Each advance team secured the road as their counterparts examined the site and restricted any additional access, as agreed. This meeting had been in the works for a long time. That was the only way the Specialist's government had caught wind of it to throw together this little welcoming party.

But no matter how long they had been planning this, how many amicable meetings had occurred prior to this one or what promises or assurances had been made, The Specialist couldn't believe anyone, not even a bunch of coked up drug barons, could be so incredibly stupid.

They brought their families.

.

* * *

.

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons"

.

Bertrand Russell

.

* * *

.

USP Florence ADMAX, Florence, CO; January 2007

.

The trial had been pretty quick.

The prisoner knew it would be. It was less about what he did on the mission and more about what he did after. After all, he hadn't really prevented or even been aware of the secret primary mission until afterward.

As he sat on the poured concrete stool in his cell he considered the mission itself. Whether he could have acted sooner. Whether he should have known better.

As for what came after, he considered himself an instrument of karma. His "defense" at his trial had not changed even given where he now found himself. He would have stood in front of that tribunal and defiantly said exactly the same words knowing, even as he had then, that their minds were already made up: "I wouldn't have done a damn thing differently."

But he didn't know when he could have stopped it sooner. When he could have known what was coming.

The other two convoys had arrived and repeated the drop off And inspection procedure. While he waited for the fifth and final participant to arrive, it happened.

Every vehicle on the hilltop, in rapid succession, erupted in flames from a barrage of RPGs, grenades and Claymores followed by volleys of machine gun fire to clean up any survivors. Those were the sounds of the four men who were supposed to "secure the road" and the prisoner had not been entirely shocked with the brutally efficient way that was done even as he automatically moved to do what he was here to do.

He earned his keep with a few tricky long-shots against the few gunmen who managed to find cover that wasn't on fire or exploding. One of the guards chose poorly and tried to run even as the flames on his back engulfed his torso and legs. The fire squad laughed as he burned while he ran which should have been The Specialist's first hint.

The Specialist picked the burning man off with a clean headshot. Even a hired gun of a drug lord shouldn't have to die like that. He hoped he warranted the same courtesy one day.

The fire squad extracted their own concealed jeeps and quickly approached the farmhouse, blocking the road and joining the remainder of the group. The Specialist's view was partially blocked by the shed and he could not hear what orders were being given but, while waiting for the jeeps to make their short trip, he had checked the other action zone to see eight other members of the team emerge from the bushes around the farmhouse to easily secure the four stunned men and their families. Four women and seven children who had expected today to mean the end of looking over their shoulders.

He had watched both the rounding up of the targets and the retreat of the fire squad ready to provide additional support but ultimately, his role in this mission was effectively over. It made him wonder why he had been requested for such a simple attack although admittedly the overkill on the road was part of what made him superfluous.

It shouldn't have surprised him. Even though he had only hooked up with them this week he had already seen their viciousness. The leader of the fire squad and second in command of the team, Lynch, had toyed with a local in a bar before slowly beating him to death under the farce of a fair fight.

But things started to change quickly when the team leader, Davidson, ordered the team to bring the men into the house. He had seen it before. Like today, usually through a long-range scope. Always with orders not to interfere. The scene played out like you might expect when one of the men protested and Lynch stepped forward to casually kill the man outright with a .45 through his face. In front of his son and screaming wife.

Despite the ensuing screaming and Lynch laughing at the feral ten-year old boy trying to attack him, everyone was rounded up. Separated. The men into the farmhouse, the women and children into the barn. They had checked the barn pre-mission to ensure there were no secondary exits. The Specialist knew when the door was secured with a heavy chain that they were trapped.

He didn't know how it had come to this. How he had hooked up with men like this. But then he hadn't cared who he hooked up with as long as assignments beginning with the words "eliminate threat" ended with the words "extreme prejudice".

Not since that day in Grozny two years ago. Not since he lost her. Not since two rebel factions had claimed responsibility for the bombing and he had simply brutally eliminated both of them.

He had expected the trial then. It was done without sanction from any agency. But it must have served their purposes. They harnessed that anger. Used it.

He had almost dared to care about someone else but she was as crazy as he was. Maybe more so. She had left him chained to a bed after he said some deliberately awful things to drive her away. He had lost too much of himself. Some he had given away. Some was taken. There was no going back. And he had no intentions of ever caring about anyone again.

Over two years now. He was still just as angry. Just as shattered. He just hid it better now.

He didn't know what information they extracted from the three remaining heads of their organizations but there were gunshots. Single shots with an eternity of screaming in between. Many more gunshots than it required to kill a man. With each one the screaming from the farm house rivaled the screaming from the barn.

At least until the screaming voices reduced in number and with one final shot ceased completely.

Then the men - his team - left the farmhouse. Laughing. That was what drove his decision more than anything. These honor less mercenaries masquerading as agents of his government, laughing and turning toward the screaming emanating from the barn while Lynch - the one who had beaten that drunk to death - retrieved what he had hidden in the shed.

The prisoner was stirred from his recollections when he heard several sets of footsteps approaching his cell. There were never this many footsteps, never any footsteps at this time of day, and nothing here ever happened off schedule.

Nothing good, anyway. He was a fish in a barrel.

Just like those women and kids in that barn.

Only there was no one coming to save him.

It had only been a matter of time.

.

* * *

.

Paraguay, October 2006

.

All eight of the strike team - execution squad, The Specialist corrected - had exited the farmhouse to join their four comrades outside the shed as Lynch exited it with a canvas bag and extracted the bag's contents.

The Specialist had, upon first meeting the team, had a conversation or two about weaponry with Lynch. They were both well versed in the history of violence and warfare. The Specialist knew his guns, Lynch knew his even more destructive tools of the trade. They found some common ground over vintage firearms - likely fueling the team's perception of him as a gun nut - until Lynch revealed himself to be a complete psychopath.

The Specialist did recall that Lynch had ditched their final mission walk-through to go see a "seller". He had assumed it to be a seller of a rare pistol or rifle, not something like this that Lynch would never manage to get out of the country. The Specialist certainly wouldn't fly on a plane if he even knew this ancient contraption was on board.

Lynch set the bag on the ground and peeled the canvas down around his prize before lifting it up to strap the three heavy tanks on his back attached to a long wand of a gun. Somehow Lynch had laid his hands on a World War II era flamethrower.

And The Specialist had seen enough of Lynch to know that they weren't leaving until he had test fired it. A thought that fully formed as five of the men joined Lynch as he moved toward the barn.

A barn full of kids. Kids who had just listened to their fathers' execution. Maybe he wouldn't be doing them any favors but they didn't deserve this. He had chosen this life. So had those men lying dead in that farmhouse. Their children had not.

He couldn't help but think about a woman he once knew. He saw to it she got his survivor benefits when his previous incarnation was "killed in action" not knowing how much she would need it during her pregnancy. He hadn't checked on her again, still living in Philly and spending her summers in Buffalo, until five years after his "death" and had been shocked to see the little girl with the long, auburn hair and his eyes running around the playground.

He couldn't make his presence known. He couldn't even send money for fear it might be traced. He checked in every few years and kept images of his daughter only in his mind. Four mental snapshots of her entire life at the ages of four, eight, ten and thirteen. That was all he dared to keep of her in case someone took their revenge on him through her.

Like what was about to happen right in front of him. The Specialist had no angle and no shot so he did the first foolish thing that popped into his head.

"Hey, Lynch," came The Specialist's voice over their comms. His voice almost cracked and betrayed him. If he stopped this, he'd never see her again. Not even to watch her grow up from afar. But if he didn't stop it, he didn't deserve to.

"Where'd you get that hunk of junk?" The Specialist continued.

He saw Lynch laugh but did not hear it, then saw the man turn to look toward his position.

"What're you talking about old man? This is a high-quality piece of German engineering. They knew a thing or two about extermination. Even if it is almost as old as you. The pressure's good. Why won't it fire?"

The Specialist knew that, in his gleeful viciousness, Lynch had not primed the firing mechanism of the gun. But rather than give him the simple answer The Specialist instructed him to come around to the backside of the shed so he could get a good look at the plumbing of the tanks.

Lynch grinned at the five men who had followed him, waiting for the show to start. He faced the shed and turned the tanks toward The Specialist's position so he could get a better look. Lynch keyed his mic and said, "Whatdya say old man? 'Bout time you earned your keep, dontcha think?"

"Yeah... 'Bout time", The Specialist muttered to himself without keying his mic. His hands were otherwise occupied.

His answer to Lynch was an explosive round that ripped through the central tank, painting the wall of the shed red when it disintegrated Lynch's black and withered heart and, activated by the impact with the tank, blew out an eight inch hole in Lynch's chest cavity.

.

* * *

.

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious"

.

Oscar Wilde

.

* * *

.

Paraguay, October 2006

.

It hadn't gone exactly as planned. He thought the whole apparatus would blow up on contact but, lost in his own head, The Specialist forgot that the central tank was just propellant. The fuel was in the other two tanks. But as Lynch's last conscious thought was a vicious one, and the dead man partly turned toward his position and impotently tried to lift his sidearm toward him, Lynch inadvertently did two things.

As he turned, the jet of propellant escaped in two streams. One weaker one, through his body out the hole where his pitiful excuse for a heart had been and the second, stronger one, more importantly, out the back of the tank. The second stream blew harder and farther out the smaller hole which was now directed toward the five men gathered around him. They foolishly just covered their eyes and mouths as they tried to assess what had happened to Lynch and the harmless gas spread over them.

But Lynch's half turn also presented a better target even as he fell to one knee with his pistol half-raised. Positioned sideways as he was, the remaining two tanks were now both positioned in The Specialist's line of fire. A much better chance of the Roufoss detonating. His fingertips automatically breech loaded a second shell and The Specialist fired as quickly as he had the thought.

This time the act of passing through the first tank similarly activated the trigger mechanism but had something more lethal than a human body as its second impact. When the shell hit the second tank the first tank, then the second, detonated in a double-cup top-and-bottom pattern that ripped Lynch's body in half at the hole through his chest. The Propellant had been spraying and the chain of events wasn't fast enough to prevent the sticky flames from blossoming out from where the ruptured propellant tank had been an instant before.

Five men who had been about to watch a barn full of women and children burned down were engulfed by the flames. The Specialist found he had neither the time nor inclination to show them any mercy. Those five men he left to take their last breaths screaming and on fire.

The Specialist slammed home the box magazine of the .50 cal as the remaining six men scrambled past the farmhouse and ran for the jeeps. Big mistake. He had a clear field of fire here.

The first was a chest hit. From the side as his arms swung as he ran. Not nearly as dramatic as the flame thrower explosion but it left a massive hole and took half his arm off on the other side.

The second made it to a jeep and moved it about twenty feet before a third jumped in. Then the ammo did the job he loved it for. He hit near the gas tank and the resultant double explosion did the job it was made for.

Magic.

A fourth ran for the trees and The Specialist nearly literally cut him in half, his legs continuing to run toward his escape and his torso tilting oddly sideways and pulling the rest of him down to bleed out.

The Specialist caught movement from his peripheral vision and took aim at the second vehicle, hitting it just as spectacularly as the first just as it began to move. But Davidson was smarter. He abandoned the jeep and its driver just as it began to move. As The Specialist took aim at the third jeep expecting Davidson, he only caught a glimpse of Davidson disappearing behind the farmhouse and, no doubt, into the woods beyond.

.

* * *

.

The Specialist made his way down to the farmhouse, pistol drawn. Eleven bodies were confirmed to be extremely dead. He had to count skulls in some cases.

He then moved toward the frantic banging in the barn and the beam across the door locked in place. He called out in Spanish for the occupants to stand back, stood to the side himself and shot the lock off. Then there was silence within.

He called out assurances and threw the door open, standing to the side just in case. Peeking around the door frame he saw them all huddled in two large masses. Family lines abandoned. At least that part of the meet had been successful.

The lone holdout was the young boy standing in the middle of the barn holding an axe. Sizing him up. Poised to charge or just stand and stare down his killer. To die on his own terms. Still covered in his father's blood.

The Specialist took a chance and holstered his weapon. He approached, knelt in front of the boy and asked his name. The boy just stared back with murderous intent.

"One of the men who killed your father, who were going to kill you and your mother, got away," The Specialist said in Spanish as he gripped the middle of the axe handle in one hand between the boy's two smaller ones but did not pull it away. "I need you to get everyone out of here so I can go after him. Or should I let him get away? Can you help me with that? What's your name?"

"Guillermo. His name is Guillermo," came the small voice of his terrified mother, drawing his attention to the corner. The Specialist returned his attention to the boy.

"Guillermo. Can you help me with that?" When there was no response, The Specialist prodded, "He's getting farther away."

Guillermo tightened his grip on the axe and stared back, considering the proposal he thought was being made. He looked back toward his mother before turning back to answer.

"I'll help you. Let's go."

Guillermo moved toward the barn door with murderous intent stopping when he heard "Whoa, whoa, whoa, cowboy," in English.

The Specialist stopped the boy by the shoulder and reverted back to Spanish, "You'll slow me down. I need you to get everyone to safety."

"If you let him get away," the blood-splattered boy said with a too-familiar look in his eyes, "I'll find you."

It was The Specialists turn to contemplate for a moment what it meant to finish the job. To _really_ finish the job. To restore balance. Before returning to what he considered more important at the moment and said what needed to be said before they could turn their attention to using the last jeep to get everyone to safety.

"Not worried about that unless you get faster. Get bigger. You'll learn more about your father as you grow. I'm not doing this for him. Get out of here and grow up. Find me then and we'll talk about whether I did the job. But if you don't grow up to be a better man than him, maybe I'll find you first."

.

* * *

.

"Blackened pride

Still burns inside

This shell of bloody treason"

.

Iron Maiden, _2 Minutes To Midnight_

.

* * *

.

USP Florence ADMAX, Florence, CO; January 2007

.

Shadows passed the four inch window to the interior. There was nothing in the cell to use in his defense. The desk, stool, bed... all made out of poured concrete.

Someone somewhere had a sense of humor. Putting him here among terrorist, bombers, cartel leaders and traitors. But he supposed he was some of those things now too. Whatever code he once lived by abandoned somewhere along the way.

The prisoner heard the lock disengage and stood at parade rest in the center of his 7 by 12 cell. Whatever came through that door was his fate. All he could do was stand there and face it as bravely as a ten year old boy had faced him.

He couldn't even reach the outer door through the bars of the inner door. If they were smart, they would spray his cell with bullets while his last hope would be to retain consciousness long enough to witness a comical ricochet.

He was still fast enough and strong enough to make one last kill, if they just stepped close enough to the inner door.

Then his visitor did just that.

He hadn't expected her.

"Prisoner six-two, ma'am," the officer said with a side glance to the prisoner that the diminutive woman did not miss.

"You're dismissed," the woman said curtly.

"But ma'am -" the guard began only to be cut off.

"Do not make me repeat myself," the five foot three woman with red hair pulled back in a severe bun said with an authority that exceeded even that which her uniform demanded and the guard retreated. The woman watched the prisoner but did not speak until the guard's and her men's footsteps also retreated, as she had instructed.

"Quite a mess you made, Major Casey."

.

* * *

.

Paraguay, Oct 2006

.

John Casey heard one side of the satellite phone conversation as he looked through the slats of the door. The other voice was too scrambled to hear clearly much less identify.

"I'm sorry, sir..." Davidson was getting his ass chewed by the distorted voice on the sat phone.

"No, sir. Lynch was supposed to take care of the witnesses when our contractor took care of him. I'm getting the hell out of Dodge before he follows me here."

Casey grinned at that from his hiding place. He had hidden transportation of his own not far from the farm. He really didn't trust spooks. He had easily beaten Davidson back here via dirt bike.

"The full fee? No split?" He heard Davidson gleefully respond to something the other party had said. Casey had been paid up front so apparently there was a side deal that Davidson no longer had to split twelve ways. "Yes sir! That's definitely enough for me to stay to take care of that."

Davidson moved about the room still collecting his things. He must have planned to change locations. Smart. But too late.

"Yes, sir. We're still set on that front..." Davidson said as he threw open the closet door and found himself eye to eye with the man he was running from, The Specialist's face still blackened by camo paint.

All seven inches of the blade of Casey's Ka-Bar slid smoothly through Davidson's throat and up into his brain as Casey slammed the hilt hard against the soft tissue until it hit bone. Then he pressed still harder lifting Davidson off his feet. The blade was visible through Davidson's parted teeth as Casey twisted it ninety degrees staring deep into the team leader's eyes.

The sat phone was now close enough and clear enough to hear "...be sure that the Martínez organization is in full control before you leave. Is that understood?"

Apparently he had one more thing to do before he left but Casey held the phone up to Davidson's head and let the gurgling of his final breaths be heard over the phone. He let Davidson's body fall to the floor and held the phone up to his own ear but, unsurprisingly, heard no reply. The other party was smart enough not to demand his identity.

He was smart enough not to give it.

But he couldn't resist letting out a long, deep growl from the back of his throat before disconnecting the call.

.

* * *

.

USP Florence ADMAX, Florence, CO; January 2007

.

"You're not slipping, are you?" General Beckman gestured toward the prisoner's bandaged cheek.

"Ask the other guy if I'm slipping," the former Major Casey replied. Beckman was unaffected.

"Four other guys, I'm told. None still in any condition to answer questions. Ever."

"Well, I didn't get this from a tricycle accident. Someone tries to kill me, I do the same. If they wanted to play, they should have come to play. What do you want?"

"I want to know why you did what you did."

Casey slowly approached the inner door of his cell and just as slowly reached both arms up to grab the bars in front of him, looking the woman intensely in the eyes before saying, "Sometimes balance has to be restored, General."

"And you think that obliterating a drug lord's entire security force and the man himself achieved that?"

Casey just shrugged thinking about the little boy in the barn, "Not for me to judge, ma'am."

"You know that's what landed you here, right?" she sighed. "I still don't know for certain exactly whose plan it was but the assurance of any US agency is pretty much shit down there now. With the government and the bad guys."

"I figured it was something like that. But that's the thing, ma'am. We shouldn't have any sort of reputation among the bad guys."

"Well YOU do," General Beckman replied, "A giant of a man. Tall and large framed. Short hair, camo paint covering his face. Spanish speaking with a smattering of English. Leaving nothing but bodies in his wake. The survivors of the first four families and the civilians you left alive at the compound of the fifth all paint the same picture."

"I only came there to kill one man, General. Anyone else who pointed a gun in my general direction made their own choice to get involved."

"That's why they're calling you what they are down there."

"What's that ma'am?"

"The Beast," she answered. "No one knows who sent you or where you went. It has everyone on edge. Instead of the smaller players filling the power vacuum, the local authorities have cleaned up based on missteps and poor choices due to paranoia. You did more good down there than you probably intended."

Casey just grunted at that and quirked his mouth into a sneer, concealing how much it hurt his wounded cheek to do so as the General asked, "Want to do some more?"

Casey did not react as the General continued, "I need your skills. I need the Beast that every drug dealer and their associate in South America is talking about. The boogeyman. But I also need the old Casey. You'll never fly stealth fighters again but I need the Major, but you already knew that. I need the man who believes in that balance. The one who understands how our world works. The one from before whatever it was that tore you apart."

General Beckman saw the huge hands tighten around the bar, knuckles turning white, but she had no intention of asking what had set him on his path.

"You've done work for me before. The kind no one talks about. You know I don't take it lightly. I've always been up front with you about why those decisions had to be made and you've always accepted my reasoning. The one thing I can promise you is that if I ever make a choice to trade human lives for the greater good, it won't be because of some personal agenda."

Casey wondered just how much The General really knew about whoever had ensured that he was incarcerated here. The person he had pissed off so much that he was sent to live out the rest of his days surrounded by the scum of the earth. Just because she had always been straight with him about mission specs didn't mean he considered her "honest". Just better than the other snakes around her.

"It will be because I believe deep in my soul that it is the only choice to make. Someone has to make those choices, Major Casey. And someone has to enforce them."

Even though he wasn't in the best shape he was eager to get back in the field. Back to where he could both be this "Beast" everyone in a position like hers needed and do some semblance of good. Back where things made sense. There was work to be done.

And it made something insatiable inside him stir as he answered, "Where do we start?"

"One of those tough choices. Someone who hasn't done anything overt... yet. Something you left unfinished."

That got Casey's attention and the maniacal grin that overtook his face when she asked her question despite the obvious pain got hers...

"How would you like to go back to Costa Gravas?"

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Casey is psychotic.

You know, in case you were unaware. He's cruising right along, seems pretty rational, and you're thinking he's a swell guy and he does have a certain code of honor but then WHAMMO he goes completely berserk. Nearly killed Devon in S2. And snaps back to "normal". They joke about "oh, Casey hasn't killed anyone in a while" but they MEAN it and how twisted is that?

I mentioned "that business in Paraguay" ages ago and hope you can read between the lines as to why Graham might have it in for Casey. So, before he's put to the test in "First Date", I thought it worthwhile to look at some of how he was "made", tying it back to Ilsa and offering some reason why he is so loyal to Beckman as the "devil he knows". Also, it took some digging but Adam Baldwin did, in fact, get that scar on his cheek from a childhood tricycle accident.

USP Leavenworth is a federal penitentiary but, from a military justice standpoint, what is usually referred to is the Disciplinary Barracks (DB) at Fort Leavenworth a few miles away. USP Florence ADMAX, also-aka ADX Florence, is where some seriously high profile evil people are held. (EDIT: anthropocene is of course correct and my original "nearby" was misplaced. In a research haze I confused my note by thinking too much of the civilian prison on Ft Leavenworth grounds (USP Leavenworth) just a few miles from the military prison - both near Kansas City, KS - with the Supermax I refer to in COLORADO. You know, like nearly all of two hugeish states apart. Oops.)

I also took a few liberties with whether Casey knew he had a daughter (even Agent K used the resources of the job he gave the love of his life up for to occasionally check on her) but, in my world, when "Tic Tac" rolls around he just doesn't know she's in California or that anyone can tie her to him. I also think I was canon-safe with the timing of Casey's third attempt on Premier Goya.

Several other influences in this one. The five family power grab is of course from the Godfather, just executed differently and less effectively from the plotter's standpoint. Also, there's a bit of a "callback" to the "movie night" chapter where Chuck lends Casey the Kurt Russell movie _Soldier_. Russell's character kills an enemy soldier and responds to the demand for a check-in on the dead man's radio with a growl. ("Well, he didn't say the word "growl", he said "a throat noise". But I asked him to imitate it and it sounded like... a growl to me.") It won't be the last _Soldier_ callback.

The decision to allude to Casey at least knowing about Alex's existence (besides the influence of _Men in Black_) was because this chapter was also mildly influenced by the song "Epiphany" from the fantastic and disturbing musical _Sweeny Todd (The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)_ which has been on cable a lot recently.

In that song Todd (formerly Benjamin Barker), seemingly robbed of his vengeance, decides to take it out on all of humanity. One-by-one. And indiscriminately because he reasons they are all either wicked and deserve to die or deserve release from this wicked world. But also lamenting that "I'll never see my girl again". If you're not familiar with Sweeny Todd it is sick, perverse, twisted and utterly brilliant in its gleeful psychosis and sadistic revenge story. Casey's not that bad but he's close.

Despite the tone of this one, Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays) to all and now that the "prologue" to "First Date" is out of the way, I can start working on fleshing out the episode itself to wrap up Book One! Thank you for your patience, support and lovely reviews!


	32. XXXII: The Beast of America (3:9)

...wherein the various machinations of two adversaries - an evil man cloaked as a patriot pitted against a madman with the best of intentions - and the moves of all of their unwitting pawns begin to converge...

Canon Reference: (Finally!) Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: One chapter (in three scenes)

A/N: Really picking away at this right now. I had hoped to include two more (currently partially written) chapters in this installment but, alas, ear wax... Err, alas, real life. Conveniently, this chapter lent itself relatively well to a stand-alone presentation so, here 'tis.

This episode's adaptation was apparently also waiting for Chuck and Sarah's voices to "speak to me" in a compelling way rather than putting out something that felt more: "oh well, good enough, let's just power through"...

Regarding the fictional (yet strongly grounded in the genre) premise of Casey's termination order against Chuck: As always, my position on canon events and/or the related spy tropes is that they are definitely... canon events. And/or definitely related spy tropes. Period.

This is a canon(ish), tropy story meant to explore that world.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also in this installment, no ownership of _The Matrix_, a revisit of _Birds and Boats_ (by Gregory and the Hawk), or those Kurt Russell Disney movies, is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

.

Part XXXII: The Beast of America, Part 3

.

* * *

.

089: The Adult Version of Forever

.

Office of the Director of the NSA, Washington, D.C.; May 27, 2008 8:20 am

.

_The Cipher is the final piece...Tomorrow, the new computer will be online, and Operation Bartowski officially comes to an end. You'll be done with us. No more briefings, no more missions, no more spies. Enjoy the rest of your life, Chuck._

.

Director Graham rudely reached across General Beckman to disconnect her secure video conferencing channel, his face revealing none of the lies of omission he had just made, and moved to leave. No doubt to look in on the preparations for his Human Intersect project. Again. His pet project in one form or another for the past decade.

"I know he's a thorn in our sides," the General interrupted the man's departure, "but what's really behind this sudden need for decisive action regarding Bartowski, Director?"

General Beckman's true, unspoken question hung heavily in the air: _"Why do you hate this young man so much?"_

With his excitement over finally having the ability to create the agents he always wanted almost out of thin air Graham was, for once, as forthcoming as he was likely to ever be.

"He's had his nose in my business in one way or another for years, Diane," Director Graham's persistent failure to properly address her - and she had no illusions of it being an attempt at camaraderie or even familiarity - never failed to amuse her. She was a Director too after all. Not to mention a General in the US Air Force, elevated to four-star rank by nature of her position, to boot. But she needed insights, so she let Graham's loquacious outburst continue.

"He held the key to the progress we are now finally on the cusp of all along... His friend and a professor - my own agent and a recruiter - conspired to hide him from me... I send my best agent to LA to deal with your fuck up - the problem you and _your_ "enforcer" allowed to happen - and somehow they all become some kind of half-assed three musketeers."

_All for one and one for all._ Graham had been thinking of them that way ever since the uncharacteristic behavior began. Ever since it became obvious to him that they covered Bartowski's involvement in Professor Fleming's Intersect screenings from six years ago.

They could have unlocked all these possibilities so much sooner with Bartowski as a research subject. Now Graham didn't even need him for that. Graham suddenly realized that he hadn't previously revealed to General Beckman what Professor Fleming had revealed to him about Bartowski and Larkin - just before Graham killed the man personally in his hospital bed - so he pressed onward.

"We have the Intersect we need now so I'm putting my house back in order. Larkin has produced more than I expected..."

_And survived much longer than you expected_, Beckman thought to herself.

"...I'll have Walker back in the fold soon enough. You get John Casey back for whatever purpose you have in mind. Everything will be as it should be. But Bartowski is as much of a trouble magnet as he is a pain in the ass."

Graham had been intending to right the table in this way for a long time. Fleming was the first as the most expendable in the chain of treachery. Larkin couldn't keep beating the odds and all three of the others would pay for screwing him over or attempting to deceive him.

Bartowski was undoubtedly the odd sock and the easiest decision. He had no value to him as an agent and was a huge security liability. Not to mention he posed the additional risk to Graham personally of being the person best equipped to discern and blow the whistle on his plans for the Intersect. He simply had to go.

Casey was an insubordinate antique who had no place in Graham's view of the modern spy army. Graham refused to see that insubordination was not what described his interactions with General Beckman. Casey had single-handedly wrecked a power move by Graham in South America, embarrassing him when he was unable to deliver the promised influence in the region (at least right away in the more elegant way he had originally devised) and had escaped Graham's retribution when Beckman pulled him off the scrap heap.

But like Larkin and Bartowski, Casey's hourglass was running low because Graham had a lot of practice at subtly guiding the most deadly people in the world into doing what he wanted.

Which brought him to Walker...he had allowed Walker a lot of leeway for too long. As long as she was the effective killer he needed he was willing to overlook that she had been slipping on a razor's edge for a while now. But now that they had recovered the _component_ that the new team had termed the Cipher, the old Cipher A _program_, now built into the encoding program, could set her straight - especially if she were in an emotionally fragile state - while the Cipher B program applied to other recruits would make her less unique and therefore less valuable. Even so, he still had a soft spot for his original human weapon.

If all went as Graham planned, the dominoes would fall perfectly. Casey would kill Bartowski, Walker would kill Casey, and the Intersect would bring things full circle by no longer being housed in Bartowski's brain but rather used, among other things, to turn Walker back into what she was best at. Make her even better than before. Even make her forget all the things she had suppressed and struggled with her entire career.

Once the emotional impact of losing him and being betrayed by another partner made her more susceptible to it, she could even be made to forget the whole affair. 'Operation Bartowski' as he had been barely able to hide his sarcasm over calling it.

She would finally be the perfect killing machine.

Graham intended to upload the Cipher B program first. He had a whole crop of new recruits who would have gloriously failed their psychological screenings. Mad dogs like Casey, just less naturally skilled. Sociopaths he could aim at a target but currently ill-equipped to execute their missions. They were slated to acquire the skill set mostly defined by Walker in a flash of light and encoded images. The Intersect that everyone was expecting, the intelligence analysis capabilities, would be uploaded separately to those who didn't go mad from the strain.

Then Walker and a few other troublesome agents would individually receive the Cipher A upload; after screening and tweaking the Cipher B agents to ensure the compliance of agents like Walker: highly skilled with an inconvenient emerging conscience. The A program had already yielded some prototype success. Walker would either conform to her new reality or have a very brief discussion with several newly minted agents suddenly just as skilled as Agent Zero.

The intel upload, the functionality that would make Bartowski superfluous, was the third application of the project. Most important to those allowing him to direct the development of the new Intersect but almost an afterthought to him until he got what he wanted.

Because of his even more unconventional intentions for the Intersect, Graham had kept the team of scientists aware of all three aspects very small and the intelligence files isolated for smaller packet delivery. Analyst or agent had different needs and he had no intention of another Bartowski with _all_ their secrets housed in one mind.

"That doesn't mean he _must_ be eliminated," Beckman argued, not knowing the full extent of Graham's plans. "Monitored, certainly. We could always use him as a backup. Or even to validate our results. But Casey has trained him to protect the secrets in his head at all costs. Bartowski even requested that training."

"Yet, the good Major has never seen fit to let him actually fire a weapon, has he?" Graham snapped. Further revealing his disdain when he continued. "Bartowski proved when he couldn't even get Walker out of that freezer that his panic would prevent such heroic sacrifice. It's all theoretical and I operate in the real world. And I don't trust someone who has skated by on the backs of others their whole life."

At Beckman's questioning look he explained his opinion of Bartowski, "His sister supporting him, his friends shielding him, hiding in a retail store with his wasted intellect, our best agents coddling him... I don't need him any more than we needed that faceless freak, Orion, no matter how much of an authority on the Intersect either claims to be."

General Beckman knew that Director Graham was ruthless. Everyone did. But she wondered how it had taken her so long to realize the depths of this man's vindictiveness.

"So you get a nice shiny base in LA and terminate an American citizen?" Beckman summed up her superficial view of the situation. She didn't know which was worse: that Graham was as vicious as he was or that he could so effectively hide it, as Graham slipped into the smooth, sympathetic tone with the crocodile smile for which he was so well known.

"Diane, I shouldn't have to remind you, this is not the solution the NSA was pursuing. I saved your ass on the Intersect project. That super computer was never going to get the job done. The neural processing emulation just doesn't exist, much less the complex comparison algorithms required, and it's no closer to reality than it was when I brought you the solution: actual Intersect Agents. Those agents, and everything associated with them, is under my purview. They are CIA. My authority extends to and includes eliminating those who cannot ensure the security of the secrets in their heads, just as I will do if it goes badly with one of my agents. I would put one of mine down without a second thought."

Beckman didn't doubt that at all. The CIA was one of two independent agencies reporting directly to the President and she didn't currently have any recourse to usurp Graham's authority without throwing the entire intelligence community into chaos and certainly weakening their position defending against a threat from within.

"All the more reason it all should have all been under the authority of the DNI all along," she lamented of the rumored soon-to-be-vacant office for which she was on the short list of candidates. A position where maybe she could curtail this sort of renegade madness within the system she once believed in. She couldn't believe she said it out loud. She didn't necessarily need Graham's endorsement but him openly opposing her wouldn't help either. She just wished she hadn't made it seem like a tit-for-tat offer.

"Your original orders to your agent were the same as mine. You showed the backbone necessary for the next Director of National Intelligence then. Don't get sentimental now," Graham responded after a moment's contemplation. In a way that made it clear that tit-for-tat is exactly what he considered this discussion to be about.

If Bartowski had become a research subject when he was first identified by Fleming, Graham thought he likely would have become Director of the CIA before the DNI even existed; when his role would have ruled the roost over the other agencies. The thought was almost enough to ruin his excitement over the new Intersect.

"Only you, me, and a handful of researchers know the leap we are about to make with these agents," he continued, knowing even she didn't have the full story. "And we're not entrusting any of them with nearly as much of the whole as Bartowski already possesses. I wanted Walker back for the second round of uploads, but she'll need to sell her cover through Bartowski's funeral."

Graham cut Beckman off before she could object to the notion of a funeral.

"_No one_ can know so much and be allowed to live. Bartowski was always on borrowed time and that time is up. You know this program is our best chance to win this fight and, when I'm asked, I'll definitely support the nomination of someone willing to make these sacrifices. Then I'll see this program through without interference, and you can join in our success or distance yourself. But Casey is on-site. He has a chance to remedy the situation he allowed to happen. To do what... He... Does. Just complete his original orders. Otherwise..."

Graham's tone turned clipped and slightly menacing, "...I'll contract it out. But my contractors enjoy their work. Consequently they tend to be a little messy. And I doubt they would have a window of opportunity outside of the response area of the sister's hospital. I haven't repurposed that base yet so you still have better clean up resources too. If you want it done differently, I'll give you until the uploads to do it differently. But it's getting done."

Graham opened the door to leave the office with a final punctuation mark on his ultimatum disguised as a courtesy.

"It's your call, Diane," then, more as much about her aspirations as who they preferred see to the killing of Mr. Bartowski, "But you can't make an omelette..."

At that, having set the board and put the pieces in motion, he closed the door behind him and smiled to himself.

.

* * *

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Echo Park, CA; May 27, 2008 5:20 am

.

_The Cipher is the final piece...Tomorrow, the new computer will be online, and Operation Bartowski officially comes to an end. You'll be done with us. No more briefings, no more missions, no more spies. Enjoy the rest of your life, Chuck._

.

Chuck Bartowski stood and wandered to the door with a goofy look on his face, which was really no different than any other time, Casey thought to himself.

Except it was.

For someone so smart it sometimes irritated Casey that he could be so dumb. So naïve. Exhibit A was Bartowski thinking the people in charge, especially Graham, would ever let him go. Then again, willful ignorance didn't seem to be limited to the civilians on this operation.

Exhibit B was Casey's own partner, who should really know better, buying Graham's story about her being allowed to stay on briefly and the new base under the yogurt shop being intended for the long term monitoring and safety of the original Human Intersect. The man they were tasked to protect. The man he had always had secret orders to eliminate when he became redundant.

Both hardened killers watched the man they were responsible for protecting - until they weren't - cross the room as the smile that had quirked his lips at the news from Graham threatened to split his face in two. He heard Walker mutter something to the cosmos as she moved to follow Bartowski. Casey was pretty sure it was something like, "He looks so happy."

Then again he may have just read her thoughts on the matter of the young man in question. They weren't exactly hard to read once you'd spent enough time around the two of them.

He wasn't blind.

"Good night, Casey," she said on her way out. He responded in kind, and began to pace his temporary apartment. His sniper's nest that disguised the sniper as a friend of his target.

Were they friends? No. Comrades?

Definitely.

Casey chuckled at the thought of Bartowski tear-assing through the warehouse complex when he realized that huge mercenary was going to beat both Walker and himself to the dead drop they now knew contained the Cipher. The kid was always surprisingly fast. And always rushing headlong into danger while constantly maintaining that he was just a regular guy. Casey didn't want him getting big headed - or to encourage him into continuing to take stupid risks - but he was much more than that.

Bartowski ran into the clutches of the biggest ball of muscle calling himself a human being - while still looking like he could move fast enough to use that muscle - that Casey had ever seen. Ran to retrieve the very thing that was going to complete the puzzle that led to his death.

Major John Casey had been acutely aware that, unlike Walker, his order to eliminate the man who held so many secrets in his head had never actually been rescinded. The General was thorough like that. Thinking about it was even more unavoidable when Bartowski himself drew the same conclusion and came to him with a request, although his view of the most likely scenario was one of imminent capture not sudden obsolescence.

Bartowski had toyed with the idea of something more nefarious, mostly concerned with keeping Walker out of it. Or preferring to die not knowing she was part of it if she was involved. Bartowski was somehow still an idealist. His mind wasn't wired that way. Yet. But give him enough time and he'd put this one together.

That was why neither Walker nor Bartowski had been informed of the progress on the new Intersect. So when Bartowski came to him to discuss Casey taking him out cleanly, it was all theoretical. At least to Bartowski. Including his one request: that, if it had to be done, Casey look him in the eye.

Why, Casey didn't really know. He wasn't asking for reassurances and Casey wasn't offering any. Despite his apparent lack of self-preservation instincts, Bartowski knew the value of the intel in his head. And knew that Casey was a man who made hard choices and followed orders.

Then he considered Bartowski's request to just "turn out the lights" if Walker was his last sight and finally realized it for what it was. He was embarrassed to have taken so long to see it.

The kid just didn't want to die alone.

Casey picked up the Cipher, the brains of the Intersect they called it. As if Bartowski didn't have brains enough to run circles around the intelligence community if they just used him right. And could keep him out of the weeds. But the kid was too much of a Boy Scout. Bartowski just knew it was something of critical national security importance that had to be kept out of the hands of their enemies and risked himself, even as the host of the Intersect, to retrieve it.

The kid couldn't help himself. He acted. Even though he had no idea what he was doing. Casey had described Bartowski as a soldier to the General on a previous occasion. And he was... just in his own uniquely different, unconventional way. Casey was completely aware that the world had changed. That warfare had changed. That his way wasn't the only way - or even the best way - anymore.

Whatever the kid was... spy, colleague, comrade, soldier... Friend...

He was one of them now and they were all expendable.

But more importantly and more relevant to the current situation, he'd made the kid a promise.

.

* * *

.

Casey deactivated the feed to his big screen and moved to his spartan desk with the dual monitor system Bartowski had set up for him. He had waited for orders he knew were coming before but couldn't remember a time where he had hoped the order would not come quite so much. He let out an amused grunt when he set the Cipher down, verified that the comm link was still open on his side and realized that Bartowski had been playing some video game during the briefing.

Probably up until Graham described what must have sounded like freedom.

"I thought you might call," Casey did not visibly react as the comm link reactivated several minutes after Bartowski and Walker left his apartment.

"Major Casey, you understand the situation?" General Beckman asked from her office in Washington.

"Frankly, ma'am, no I don't. Shouldn't we at least consider Bartowski our backup system?"

The General sighed at that. She would expect no less of her right hand man than him asking the same questions she had.

"As Director Graham has just reminded me, the NSA was involved in the Intersect project from the standpoint of a fully computerized solution. The CIA and their Omaha Project have authority over any HumInt resources. Under no circumstances in this arrangement would Bartowski be our backup. It's Graham's call."

"Then let his Enforcer do it," Casey snapped and tried not to scoff visibly at the idea. How would that turn out for them, he wondered.

"Walker has to remain in California to sell the cover effectively," Beckman said and Casey nearly cringed at that one. What a complete and utter bastard. Maybe, he thought, Graham should be the next person on his list and then Beckman delivered the next surprise.

"And he wants her for his second group of Intersect agents. A lighter version that doesn't require what Mr. Bartowski can do, apparently. She'll be recalled as soon as everything checks out on our end. And she fully sells her cover on her end. To be completely honest, he described this as allowing you to take care of this as a courtesy."

Casey was surprised to hear Walker would be somehow subjected to Intersect technology - wondered if she was aware of that yet - but it was the General's final statement that landed exactly as Graham had intended.

"Courtesy? How so?"

"This all started with Larkin's infiltration on our watch, Major."

"Yeah, _his_ agent."

"_His_ agent breached _our_ security. And if not professional pride, he offered that we have better cleaners domestically. Left the details up to us. He reminded me that his most likely contractors would follow the script. And that nearly all of Bartowski's service area for the Buy More falls inside the emergency care coverage area of Westside Medical."

That did get a reaction from Casey. Contractors. Graham's deviants who got off on killing. Follow the script. Make it as messy and decisive as possible.

They would deliver Ellie's brother to her in pieces. Or as a charred corpse. A delightful, brilliant, beautiful woman who had invited him into her home and to her table forced to witness the ghastly aftermath of her only remaining family member's death.

Or, an offer that Casey could take Graham up on. What passed for a courtesy in their world. A chance for him to do what he had promised the young man he would do for him when the time came. Kill him cleanly. And now the thing he hadn't allowed himself to properly consider; somehow shield his sister from as much of the aftermath as possible.

"We can't have another Intersect wandering around Los Angeles getting into trouble," the General continued, still trying to convince herself that this approach of burning a risky asset - something she had done countless times before - was the right choice. It was just...as irritating as Bartowski could be in his failure to follow protocols he admittedly knew little about, he did not share the shady origins or murky motivations of most assets. By all accounts, he was simply a nice guy.

Casey saw the truth in the General's comment. Bartowski was certain to get himself into trouble, especially if the Intersect continued to point him in the direction of wicked people. How likely was it that those people would be Fulcrum or a foreign intelligence agency? That they would capture, torture and kill the kid if they found him? Extract vital secrets that were his responsibility to protect no matter the cost?

Given the sheer magnitude of the risk involved, did the likelihood even matter? Suddenly Bartowski's only viable plan for survival seemed to be remaining a valued intelligence asset. The Intersect component on Casey's desk was going to make him redundant and unnecessary.

"General, Chuck may be a novice spy, but the results speak for themselves. Surely we can find another exit strategy?" Casey knew he was grasping at straws now, but he had to try.

General Beckman had already made her deal with the devil. So had anyone who worked with Langston Graham in any capacity. The only way she could be sure he did not continue to operate completely unchecked was if she moved into a position of similar exposure. To do that, she had to create the impression that she owed that position to him in some way. Or was at least willing to play ball.

Maybe Graham had played her but she did feel a sense of ownership for the current situation. But she cleaned up her own messes. Even if Casey was often her proxy she made the tough calls. For better or worse, it had long ago become acceptable for her to sacrifice one man for the good of a nation. And this man, as innocent in all this as he had turned out to be and through no fault of his own, was undoubtedly the greatest ongoing security risk she could possibly imagine.

She appreciated Casey's thoughts on the matter but there were larger concerns. Luckily, her man had never failed to follow a direct order.

"You have your orders, Major. Tomorrow night, eliminate Chuck Bartowski."

.

* * *

.

Courtyard, Echo Park, CA; May 27, 2008 5:20 am

.

_The Cipher is the final piece... Tomorrow, the new computer will be online, and Operation Bartowski officially comes to an end. You'll be done with us. No more briefings, no more missions, no more spies. Enjoy the rest of your life, Chuck._

.

Chuck wandered out to the courtyard, stunned speechless by Director Graham's words.

By even the idea of somehow finally having some control of his life - control he had once taken for granted and squandered - returned to him.

Sarah had caught up to him before he left Casey's apartment but fell back from his side to trail behind him, not just to close Casey's door behind them but to simply observe. Watching silently. Unnoticed but unoffended by his apparent disregard for her. Observing as Chuck seemed to emerge from a trance and let the idea of his freedom being restored to him wash over him. She imagined it was not unlike an unjustly convicted prisoner serving a life sentence being informed he was suddenly being released.

For his part, Chuck was reflecting on nearly a year of his life spent in a constant state of anxiety. Anxiety he had never really been able to adequately explain to his handlers. Anxiety that those looking for him would find him, sure. But more a constant fear that he would miss something. Some important piece of intel that could have saved someone's life or many lives.

A few days ago he reported that he thought he had finally located that lost agent - the one Sarah had missed by a day or less in Cambodia - in a remote region of Thailand. Maybe a trained agent with this new Intersect could have found him faster. Thoughts like that haunted him constantly.

And it wore on him in more ways than one because the Intersect never, ever stopped. If he went into his sister's apartment and Morpheus himself was waiting for him, sitting there in a beat-up red leather wingback chair, complete with a leather trench coat with a weird collar and temple-less sunglasses, offering to explain to him "What Is The Intersect?"... Well, Chuck was sure the bit about the "splinter in your mind, driving you mad" would be in there.

The Intersect ran in the background all the time, seeking new data points in everything he saw or heard. Constantly trying to draw connections even while he slept.

The Intersect seemed to regard sleep as a deliberate attempt to starve it of new inputs and it retaliated accordingly. Trying to force him awake to absorb more data. It was all Chuck could do to sleep for a few hours at a time so one year felt like three. Or more. Because it wasn't just one "matrix" he was trying to unravel. It was dozens. Hundreds. Smaller problems perhaps, but all of them simultaneously. All the time.

He could have reported it but it both seemed like whining that he would likely be mocked for and he kept Sarah's advice to him in mind: _never let them see all your cards_. Let them figure it out on their own then they would see what he was dealing with. Maybe that would encourage them to make a point of getting it out of his head completely.

Or maybe the new version ran more efficiently. He would still be stuck with the Intersect in his head but maybe he could drown it out without regular stimuli trying to open a new thread of subconscious thought. There had been no mention of removing it. Maybe they wanted to keep their options open? Keep the old version on line until the new was proven.

Maybe it was too risky of a procedure? If there was a procedure. But then they'd just had their Intersect restored to them and were more interested in seeing what it could do in the hands of the agents they had envisioned. Why worry about restoring his own mind back to his possession when they clearly couldn't wait to replace him with someone better? He couldn't blame them.

But if he could pass this responsibility off to a group better suited to handle it, maybe he could manage the inputs and have a real life. Not take the opportunity for granted like he had after Stanford.

He was no Neo. No Kevin Flynn, from a generation before. Or even a Dexter Riley, the original computer who wore tennis shoes, a generation before that. Was it so selfish to want so badly to hand that responsibility back to the people who volunteered for it? Stronger people. The real super heroes. People like Casey.

People like Sarah...

.

* * *

.

Sarah was trying not to think just how close she had come to losing him tonight. Again. His adorably cocky reaction when she and Casey had run off that huge mercenary who was hanging him out the side of a building. His inability to let a good opportunity for a Han Solo impersonation to pass him by. The way he could make her smile in even those harrowing situations. And his inability to stay in the damn car.

Protestations that it was never safe in the car aside, he hadn't been running to safety. He had realized neither she nor Casey would get to the Cipher before the merc. But Chuck could. And did. Without hesitation, not even knowing at the time that it was the key to his cage. Just that it was something that needed doing.

He was extraordinary.

Casey would say extraordinarily stupid. But even though their unknown adversary had caught up to him, Chuck had talked the huge man to death long enough for them to arrive. Thanks to his usual ingenuity and ability to engage literally anyone, she didn't lose him.

But now she was going to lose him anyway.

At least that's what it felt like. Physically... Geographically... She would be sent somewhere abroad with a new name and completely fictional history and purpose. Both she and Casey would leave him to return to his old life. But somehow it felt like he was leaving her.

And he was, really. He was leaving her world. The one he had been sucked into without his consent. It reminded her of that damn song he had left on her iPod for her, the one about boats and stars, thinking he was holding her back from pursuing greater adventures. A star skyrocketing away to a better sky.

_I live to let you shine._

And then, suddenly, even if just for a moment, it was all OK. Because she couldn't escape this world, but if he could...it was really the best outcome either of them could hope for. He was going to have a wonderful life.

Without her.

"Are you okay, Chuck?" Sarah put away her selfish concerns and exchanged them for a brave face before she asked and Chuck, pulled out of his musings by the sound of her voice, sputtered through an answer.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm, uh, uh... I mean, I... I don't believe it, but... but, uh, I... I think I'm _great_!"

There it was. That infectious glee. That light that radiated out of him and brightened everyone around him. And it caused her to smile too.

He was getting out of her world before they took that from him and she considered that a success. There was the way he made her feel, of course, like someone worth more than her undeniably impressive skill set. But seeing the way he made everyone around him - even her - just better versions of themselves was what she would miss the most.

"Well, you're going to get your old life back," Sarah offered simply.

She really was very happy for him. But she would be lying if she didn't acknowledge some small but unsatisfying pleasure as she saw in his face that the full reality of the situation was beginning to dawn on him. She wondered if he would miss her as much as she already missed him. If he would miss what they might have been to each other in another world where they both fit.

If his light could have survived her world. Or if she could ever have belonged in his.

"Yeah, I was starting to think that you and Casey were going to be my spy protectors forever," Chuck responded, even as the weight of the implications became apparent to him. "Or, whatever the adult version of forever is."

She smiled at his cleverness. They could play this game. Dance this dance. Just one more time.

Even after he had almost disappeared forever - truly forever - into a government bunker when it seemed that a freelancer with ties to Fulcrum had uncovered him, neither of them dared to discuss what was said on that helipad. And what wasn't said.

She had said to Casey something about giving a good guy a life sentence but now he had his reprieve. This wasn't the time to lament the sacrifices attached to that reprieve. Even then Chuck, bravely facing his erasure from the world was only concerned with his sister...and with her. He had said that one day they might say how they really feel, but he had a lot to process and this was not the time for might-have-beens.

She couldn't blame him. She wasn't ready to attempt to define what they were or were not either.

And it really didn't matter anymore.

"Don't tell me you're going to miss all of this," she joked about their very different natural habitats - the separate worlds in which they each belonged - and he responded similarly, with a virtual highlight reel of his most harrowing adventures. And moments most revealing of his true nature.

"No. No, of course not. I don't think I'm really cut out for a job where you disarm a bomb, steal a diamond, and then jump off a building."

"Well, you could have fooled me," she tried to open a window even as he followed her lead of never directly addressing what was truly on their minds and danced expertly around the reality of their situation. The only man who had ever been able to match wits with her. Made her scramble to keep up even. Like two master swordsmen with no interest in dispatching each other. To do so would deny them both of their only worthy adversary.

"That's very kind of you to say, but I'm pretty sure my girlish screams in the face of danger give me away," he persisted in this notion that bravery was in any way synonymous with an absence of fear.

This unassuming man who, if it was anywhere in his nature, could cut through her - into the softest parts of her she had long ago hidden away - could utterly slice her to ribbons, instead just stared into her eyes until the silence was deafening.

Even then she still found herself uttering empty words.

"So, what happens now? You're almost free. What are you going to do next?" Sarah asked.

"Well, you know I got the Buy More..." and at that, Sarah could hold her tongue no longer.

"Chuck, can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

They don't do this. Say what they mean. It's understood to be against the rules of the dance. And if she thought about it a moment longer she would have backed away but her true opinion of him came pouring out.

"You can do anything. I've seen you in action. And I'm not just talking about the bomb defusing, or the diamond stealing. I mean... anything you wanted, you could have."

It was the look he gave her then that almost broke her. The one that he gave her when he caught her in a lie. Because he could have a great many things. A world of wonderful, fulfilling things. But he couldn't hide what he truly wanted.

"Anything?" he asked pointedly.

"Within reason," she smiled, neither one of them really knowing whether that ruled her out or not. Because could she even give him what he truly wanted? Was there enough left to her for that? This was why they - or at least she - never tackled these questions directly. "Better get some rest. It's been a long night."

"Yes, the Buy More waits for no man," Chuck said. And without yielding any ground to her withering glare at mentioning that place again added, "and anything takes time."

"Good night, Chuck." She had to get away from the implication that he was willing to wait for what he truly wanted.

And he let her go. Always knowing when he had pushed as far as that fragile core of her could bear. "G'night, Sarah."

She could feel his eyes following her as she walked away.

.

* * *

.

She walked deliberately slowly and calmly out of the courtyard, all the way to the archway between the apartment complex and the street. Then, as she passed through the archway that she had always seen as the portal between Chuck's world and hers, she stepped off to the side into the cold, welcoming embrace of the shadows.

She leaned her rear against the stucco wall, feet out in front of her, and put her hands on her knees. She breathed deeply a few times before finally blowing out a deep breath as she leaned her head back against the cool stucco.

_Anything takes time_, the sweet, ever hopeful, hopelessly heroic man had said.

Time. Something they no longer had.

The sun would soon wash away the stars of the night sky but with few other options she searched what few stars were still visible in the pre-dawn Los Angeles sky for an answer.

Constellations once thought to be born of stories instead of the other way around, fading as dawn overtook them. Ancient myths looking down with a mixture of pity and condescension at the pathetic notion of mere mortals' lives dictated by something so trivial as time.

She caught a glimpse of it low in the southeast just as the sun began to erase it. The red star Antares. The brightest star of its constellation. The rest of which was now obscured by daylight but she knew it for what it was. The bloody heart of Scorpius. The most fearsome of beasts named for its burning sting, a burning rivaled only by the sensation in her own beating, less celestial heart.

Because despite what that heart might think it wants, there was her answer. If she chose to believe what was written in the stars. That she was lucky to have had their brief time together in the same sky.

She didn't have to look for the beast's counterpart in the west. Past the horizon. She knew he would not be there to offer any additional guidance, having already yielded the sky to his arch nemesis. As the Scorpion would yield the sky to him when the days grew shorter and colder.

Forever separated. Too volatile a combination to coexist. Their very nature keeps them apart. The two never appear in the same sky.

Ever.

The fearsome Scorpion was just beginning to assume its position for the summer, having already chased it's only worthy adversary from the mortal world, the winter Hunter, from the night sky.

Just as they had done to each other every year for eons. Both having to settle for a futile pursuit of each other across the sky as a substitute for reliving their fateful clash. Chasing each other in agonizingly slow motion for eternity. They would dance their dance forever.

Time making fools of even the immortals in ways only eternity can.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: Coincidentally, the acronym DNI not only refers to the Director of National Intelligence (head of the 17 member US intelligence community and the second of the two independent agencies among them - besides the CIA - which report directly to the President) but is also the recognized acronym for Direct Neural Interface - or Brain-Computer Interface. Also the Buy More, much like any other retail store, probably uses it for "Do Not Inventory".

General Beckman's military rank is somewhat nebulous (and one of those little inconsistencies generally regarded as inconsequential). She is sometimes described as a Brigadier General (one star) but the nature of her office carries more authority. The Director of the NSA must always be a commissioned officer of the military services and is appointed to the grade of a four-star general (or admiral) while they hold the office. It is unknown what could possibly justify such an elevation in position but let's assume for now that she is simply a bad ass in her own right.

And, it's true, to maintain order in the heavens the two constellations (Orion the Hunter and Scorpius the beast which killed him in some stories of Orion's death - and in a subset of those also died of its own wounds at the hands of Orion - there is no single definitive or comprehensive tale) never appear in the same sky. Fun fact: To keep the Scorpion from roaming the heavens and resuming his battle with Orion precautions have been taken. Sagittarius' (the Archer's) bow is trained on the visibly red star Antares, the Scorpion's heart.


	33. XXXIII: The Beast of America (4:9)

...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: Episode 201 ("First Date"); pre-date

Contents: Two chapters (published separately), both around 5K and not quite to the actual date yet!

A/N: This installment represents a break from the looming spectre of the "kill order" and gets us closer to the OTHER focus of this episode (the one for which it is actually named). And now, much like the episode itself, an exclusively Charah side trip! Yer welcome!

Apologies for the structural difference of these "First Date" chapters and the fact that this very rich episode is dragging into so many installments. I'm releasing stuff as it becomes available. I hope to regain some momentum but have encountered issues with Document Manager for longer installments (cut &amp; paste, uploads in Word or plain text, you name it) where I can only add small chunks at a time so - rather than wasting time and effort on uploads - I am splitting this installment into its constituent chapters.

If any one has any insight into this difficulty creating (admittedly long) documents from Apple devices, please share your work arounds. I think it has to do with the sheer bulk of the changes, hidden "special" characters (like soft page breaks and spaces before carriage returns) and/or lags in the file "readying" itself for additional edits but what do I know...

And apologies for the delay but: RL.

Given those challenges recently, thank you all so much for your lovely reviews last time. I couldn't divert the time to respond individually but they motivated me to not abandon at least thinking about how to proceed with this story. Besides finding very little time to write, when I did write it was in snippets and these chapters were... troublesome. I didn't want to rush them and still am not completely happy with some elements.

Also the glorious summer of solving mysteries and saving our dimension from obliteration that was _Gravity Falls_ ended. Much like the finale of Chuck I had no appreciation for the void it would leave until it happened. Mystery Twins Forever!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK is asserted or implied. Also in this chapter, no ownership of _The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings_ trilogy is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXXIII: The Beast of America, Part 4

* * *

.

90: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

.

Buy More Plaza, Burbank, CA; May 28, 2008 10:30 am

.

Chuck Bartowski managed to escape the Buy More after a long morning of checking things off a list that existed only in his mind.

Racing an impossibly massive mercenary around an abandoned building last night - and the subsequent adrenaline crash after being held by his tie, dangling out a window until Casey and Sarah had arrived to save him - had left Chuck a bit too exhausted to fully process the new from early this morning at the time.

Especially when Sarah had gone from looking impossibly bad ass after blowing the door open and brandishing that shotgun to the cool, consummate professional in front of her and Casey's superior officers to the sweet, kind and compassionate face that she sometimes graced him with once they were alone in the courtyard.

And it was "grace". In so many ways.

It wasn't until he met her that Chuck fully realized the richness of that word.

She was a blessing to be sure - and not just because she tended to save his ass so often, just as Casey did - but also just for being the amazingly interesting person that she is. The person that he wasn't sure she could see that she was.

And grace certainly described the elegance and efficiency with which she moved in everything she did. Whether fighting someone twice her size or serving tasty wieners - or fro yo now - it was fascinating just to watch the way she moved. Ethereal. Like something not of this Earth.

Grace certainly described her unbelievable physical skills. As though they were divinely given. She always focused too much on her more deadly "gifts" and a view of herself that assumed those skills defined her. She would likely argue that any "gifts" came from below and not from above. But her gifts were many and varied. Just by paying attention he knew she was at least capable, if not fluent, in twenty different languages he had identified. That was abnormally exceptional. He had looked it up. But also, her strategic mind was razor sharp. As was her wit.

And there was an ability to read people - something she had once hinted vaguely predated her training as a spy somehow - that she also felt she had tainted by using it as a spy. Even though it had likely saved her countless times. But he had seen how it served her with others - and the depths of compassion of which she was capable - in her interactions with Ellie.

When they had started this madness, when she hadn't known whether he could be trusted to hold up his end of the cover, their lies had been more blatant. The more time Sarah spent with Ellie, the more it was apparent to him that Sarah desperately wanted his sister to like her. It was only then that he noticed her quiet, apprehensive moments.

She wasn't quite prepared for the intensity of Ellie's affection but, once he and Sarah found their footing as a spy couple, Sarah had always known just how to assuage Ellie's quiet but palpable concerns.

It was something she said had no place in her world yet something he saw in her from the beginning. From that life altering night when a woman who had lied to him from the start had asked him to trust her. A woman the persistent images in his mind had revealed to be extremely deadly and dangerous. And prolific in the use of those skills. Something that made her even more of a conundrum.

It was compassion.

She had proven his observations right again and again. Both through his own persistent doubts and the lies that were necessary to keep Ellie - and Morgan, and Devon, and his co-workers - as untouched by the dangers of the spy world as possible.

Chuck was sure that another spy would not have been so artful. Not just to ensure success but because - despite the inferences that a lazy mind could draw based on her past alone - Sarah Walker actually cared what Ellie thought and how Ellie felt. And somehow despite never really telling Ellie the truth, at least after those earlier, clunkier covers, he would be hard pressed to think of a time when Sarah had actually told Ellie an outright lie. Much like she did with him. Even the vague half truths were told to do what she was best at.

Not kill. Protect.

Even with what seemed like as many as two dozen languages at her disposal, Sarah spoke less than most but said more than anyone he knew. He doubted anyone noticed just how smart she was or just how kind she was but there was certainly grace in her tongue.

But he had come to know just how much she preferred to play things close to the vest. To hide her true thoughts and emotions. Knowing what was on both sides of the water, he was amazed how much of the iceberg was below the surface. Beneath the diamond hard facade. He could only imagine the hard lessons of her life as a spy the taught her to keep that impenetrable shield firmly in place knowing what he thought he knew about the woman underneath.

It was those few occasions when she sometimes lowered that shield - not completely, but far enough that he could see some of the real her - that glimpse was the true grace he associated with her. The grace she bestowed on him.

The gift of those moments when she showed him a little bit more of the woman underneath the agent. The one she once insisted there was no place for in her world, even as it peeked out like the whisper of light that burned around the edges of a total eclipse.

The moments when he knew that she was worth any sacrifice for whatever guy was fortunate enough to one day find her ready to open her heart to him. The moments when she showed how much she trusted him in comparison to everyone else by letting him see the real her.

It had been weeks since that night on the helipad. Graham had her traipsing around the world following up on various leads under the cover story that she was settling a grandfather's estate while the Weinerlicious was rebuilt from below. Being the favorite granddaughter she undoubtedly would be if it was true, the story was that she had inherited the money she used to buy into the frozen yogurt franchise.

The story and the reality of her assignments kept her on the move and every time she went away he spent most of the time worrying about her, simply hoping for her safe return. And she did keep him informed when she could. At least about the cover of her new small business venture.

Apparently Graham kept reminding her that moving him to a secure facility would always be an option on the table. Then reminding her that the new spy base under her Fro Yo Shop, which he had not yet seen, even had a confinement area so that an uncertain situation like the Longshore incident wouldn't necessarily mean an irreversible extraction. That was the element of that night that dominated their private conversations. That made her chew her lower lip with concern for him.

Graham apparently mentioned it so much that Chuck wondered if Graham would have him try it out for a night only to find the doors had been sealed. Chuck was just glad the options discussed hadn't included anything worse, and even more irreversible, than an extraction or detention under a Fro Yo shop.

They never talked about the rest of that night. Never spoke of their almost-confessions and empty promises. Not directly.

But whenever she returned to Burbank he knew implicitly that she needed to be reassured that he was still there and not whisked away to some detainment facility. She needed to know that she hadn't failed him in her absence. The way she cared so deeply about his well-being beyond just his physical protection was just one of many layers of her that he found so intriguing.

He had every expectation that every time he watched her leave would be the last time. Either by reassignment or the worst possible outcome of a mission. She, thankfully, just kept showing back up.

She usually checked in with him at the Buy More, an adorable look of relieved surprise registering on her face with that earth-shattering smile of hers when she found him where he belonged at the Nerd Herd desk. A corresponding smile overtaking his own face when he saw she had returned, usually somehow sensing her presence and somehow beating the trained spy to the draw and seeing her enter.

On a few occasions he sensed her presence more tactilely when he woke to feel her warm body - and surprisingly ice cold feet - slide up behind him under the covers of his bed. She would clutch him from behind until she felt reassured enough to let him turn and reassure himself. It was sometimes twenty minutes or more until she let him turn and hold her head against his beating heart where she often dozed off.

It was those moments when he laid there just feeling her breathe behind him. Knowing there were no words he could say to wash away whatever she had done while she was gone. And not caring what she had done to do so since it ensured her return.

Once she slid in behind him she was completely still. Nothing so demonstrative as sobbing into his back or shuddering with emotion. She just held him with one arm around his torso, seemingly loosely but he doubted he could break her grip. Silent and still. But from her, until she let out that deep sigh, and to him, until he felt the wiry muscles of her arm relax, she may as well have been screaming.

This was their limbo. Selling the cover but never pushing for more while stealing and freely giving that reassurance from and to each other.

He wished he could have woken this morning to feel her spooned against him after too little sleep. But as it was he lay in bed hitting the snooze button three times until he finally let a moderately acceptable song play on his clock radio while he formulated a plan for the day.

He would no longer be the sole Human Intersect now that they had recovered the Cipher. Sarah had cautioned him that he would likely remain under surveillance for the rest of his life. Or at least until a means to fully remove the Intersect was developed.

That was one of the other plans that Graham had shared with her, and her with him. Graham wouldn't relinquish the base under the Fro Yo Shop now that he had a foothold and a modified mandate that allowed his agents to operate domestically on a limited basis under a secret exception to the relevant executive order. And as long as Chuck had some version of the Intersect housed within his brain there would always be at least two agents stationed at the yogurt shop for his safety in the event of an emergency.

He hated himself for asking if she might be one of those agents. Even the highly trained spy that she was didn't immediately meet his eyes when she offered a feeble, "Anything's possible."

As always, it was not blatant. She recovered well but, as much as he hated being foolish enough to ask, he hated when a seemingly simple question forced her to lie to him more.

Sarah's future whereabouts were an important point of interest for Chuck. He, of course, knew a bit more than he had ever let on about her from the Intersect. Most of it not pretty. He wondered whether retaining the Intersect without feeding it regular intel gave him any hope of discerning her whereabouts from other sources of information but concluded he would likely only be able to guess where she might have been. And even that was a disservice to just how proficient she was at leaving no trace.

The important fact - the relevant fact - was, that wherever she would soon be, it would likely not be here.

Upon waking, Chuck first reminded himself that at least he could get on with some semblance of a life in a matter of days. His plan for this particular day was a bucket list of sorts. First, find a place of his own. Catching Devon and Ellie soaping more than each others' backs this morning in the shower of their single bathroom had hammered that home.

Of course, he'd have to find a better job, maybe even finally finish his degree provided he could remove the stain of his supposed cheating and unfreeze his already-earned college credits, if he wanted a place of his own. He barely covered his share of rent, food and utilities as it was but he was trying not to get bogged down in all of that. It was definitely going to be a process but at least he wouldn't be constantly exhausted from night missions soon. Maybe he could replace them with night classes.

Morgan intercepted him as soon as he hit the Buy More sales floor excited about the insane Call of Duty strategy he had conceived to challenge his adversaries from Large Mart.

Chuck wasn't sure which was more impressive: that one of Morgan's other gaming buddies had conceived a way to custom code a 100-player CoD map that actually ran properly (if it did), that Morgan had managed all the logistics of borrowing small amounts of server capacity from multiple gamers' day jobs in a way that would go unnoticed, or that Morgan's peers - 49 other hardcore gamers - trusted Morgan with their battle strategy based on those logistical skills.

Chuck had always thought that, if Morgan ever focused on something other than avoiding work, maybe he could prove everyone wrong. At least those people who were so sure he would always be a screw up and who had, unfortunately, somewhere along the way, convinced Morgan of it too.

But of the items on Chuck's list - not even a bucket list - prerequisites for a bucket list - there were only a few he could resolve here and now. So he broke away from Morgan and sought out Casey, nearly losing a hand and a treasured Beastmaster "outdoor kitchen solution" sale in the process, to thank him for all he had done as his co-protector. His teacher. He wouldn't dare call him a friend to his face but he considered him that as well.

There were super-spies like Bryce, and maybe that's what Chuck once thought this business of theirs was all about. But, in addition to his own observations, Chuck had accidentally seen a few Intersect provided insights into John Casey too. It was a hard man like Casey who made hard choices to do what had to be done that Chuck now thought meant more than any romanticized James Bond fantasies he may have once held.

He managed to thank Casey and the big man was as dismissive and unreadable as ever when the "better job" riddle refused to be ignored, this time in the form of a bellowing Big Mike. The assistant manager job he had once blown off to stop a madman with a bomb - effectively ceding it to the insufferable Harry Tang - practically gifted to him this time.

But it wasn't nearly enough. Instead of blindly accepting, Chuck thought of what Sarah had said very, very early this morning. That he could do anything. Have anything he wanted. There were things he could do to become more than the Stanford dropout he had once accepted himself to be. She was at the number one position on his list if he could make himself into the type of man who deserved her.

This reliable, safe, far-from-challenging job wasn't on the list at all. An assistant managership didn't make him feel like he could do anything. And it certainly wasn't what he truly wanted.

The "better job" riddle was no closer to being solved but it was the last-but-certainly-not-least item on his list that now consumed his thoughts. It was the simplest but the most daunting. The least likely to succeed and the most time sensitive. It was terrifying but when he thought of her for the hundredth time since waking up this morning he suddenly simply knew he was in the wrong place.

As he headed toward the door instructing his colleagues to make their cases for the position he didn't want, Morgan knew exactly where his head was at.

"If you were to choose someone over me and all that we've built, it should be her," Morgan had somewhat jokingly said, unsure why Chuck was so nervous about talking to his girlfriend but supportive, nonetheless. Chuck's sleep-deprived brainstorming had included a possibility of he and Morgan rooming together but, as he often did when he thought of her, Chuck dared to consider a different impossible future.

One where she could somehow stay. Or return. One where he didn't have a matter of days to make good on his helipad promises and say how he really felt about her. Would that they could and Chuck knew that vision of his future was far too much to ask. But the nearly impossible possibility lingered in his mind and here he was steeling himself to check off the most important thing on his list.

The sliding glass doors opened and the expanse of asphalt between the Buy More and the Weinerlicious - or the Orange Orange as it was now called - never looked so daunting. A bridge between his world and hers, this time deliberately traversing it.

Because she was worth it. Worth doing everything on his list once he was free to do so. Worth being more than he was.

As he paused before stepping out the sliding glass doors, the wisdom of a sage old wizard slipped into his mind. Pointing out what a dangerous business it was to step out your door. To leave the comfortable behind and venture out into the world.

But then, as he released the breath he had been holding and took that step, he also thought that maybe the happiness you deserve is proportionate to the misery you are willing to risk.

As he walked with his hands tucked into his pockets around the hem of his untucked shirt, Chuck looked up at the sign above what used to be a Weinerlicious. The facade of Sarah's new cover job apparently now intended to keep an eye on him even once he was no longer the only human intersect in the world. A new cover which was slightly more in line with the capable woman beneath that beautiful shell as she was supposedly part-owner of this particular franchise.

He smiled at the "Double-O" connections of the "Orange Orange" name and is earlier thoughts about the gorgeous, brilliant woman inside. Undoubtedly the best of the best at her job but also so much more than she was willing to give herself credit for. And she didn't have to dress like a beer girl in an Oktoberfest celebration anymore, even though she was undeniably cute in that official "weinergirl" uniform. Not that he would ever, ever, ever say that to her face.

His long strides devoured the expanse of asphalt much more quickly than he would have thought. His confidence began to falter with each long stride and he watched her for a moment through the front glass of the shop. This was the first task for himself he thought of when he formed the list in his mind of things he must do as his spy life drew to a close but also the one that frightened him the most.

But he was far more frightened of a life spent wondering what might have been if he didn't somehow find the nerve to at least try.

It _was_ a dangerous business to step out that door but he found comfort in an unlikely character from that tale. Something few people noticed about Frodo's description of their great adventures, and particularly of his steadfast companion throughout. That venturing much farther than he ever had, fleeing ringwraiths and battling orcs and goblins and giant spiders, even physically carrying a corrupted friend to the successful completion of his quest, we're not the bravest things that the loyal, unwavering Samwise had done.

By Frodo's accounting, Sam's bravest act was reserved for his return to The Shire. Frodo's last written words as he documented their journey, their unlikely survival, and their return were that, rather than those adventures and near-death experiences, it was Sam courting Rosie Cotton and ultimately asking her to marry him.

_That_ was what Frodo considered to be the bravest thing Sam had ever done.

And with a deep breath exhaled through pursed lips followed by a small smile at a time when Morgan had referred to himself as the Samwise to Chuck's Frodo, Chuck pulled open the door of the Frozen Yogurt shop to complete his quest and his intentional journey from his safe, quiet, boring world into hers.

.

* * *

.

Orange Orange Frozen Yogurt, Burbank, CA; May 28, 2008 10:50 am

.

It took one glance for Chuck to confirm what he had seen through the window.

She looked happy. Carefree. Just a pretty, clever, charming young woman sneaking a taste of some frozen yogurt while she served a customer. Everything he'd hoped for her since he met her, even if just for a moment.

But for Chuck, the unfortunate dark cloud behind the silver lining of their conversation just hours ago had finally sunk in.

Be careful what you wish for.

Soon he would be free of the burden of being the only Intersect. And the Double-O connotations of the sign over the entrance of her cover job only emphasized the point that he would no longer rate the protection of two of America's best secret agents. Despite himself, he couldn't help but wonder whether her happiness was partly because she was on the edge of returning to the adventurous life she knew before becoming his protector and it almost made him abandon his plan entirely.

With those new doubts and all those other thoughts that had him on the edge of panic on the way over here all that he could manage to utter was, "Hey."

Like Sarah often did, she offered a smile that convinced him that she was genuinely happy to see him. And even though he still couldn't discern the exact nature of her own thoughts she managed to somehow convey, just as she did in the twilight hour of this morning, the weight of both his and her unspoken thoughts with only a "Hey," of her own.

Maybe he was just seeing what he wanted to see… That he was right about everything he suspected about the woman beneath the skin of the spy. Or maybe it was Morgan who was right. She was awesome. Completely unironically speaking.

"So can I be completely honest?" Chuck managed to shake off his doubts and regain his feet, leading up to what he came here to do.

"Yeah..." Sarah drew out with suspicion even as a smile began to threaten the corners of her mouth.

"I miss the Wienerlicious," he blurted and the smile that had been threatening to overcome Sarah's face now widened, emboldening him to continue. "I mean, the Bavarian charm and the toxic nacho cheese that you guys had-."

"My clothes smelled like sausage," Sarah lamented with her smile only subsiding slightly and Chuck commiserated.

"Nostalgia completely gone," he said before realizing that there was no natural way to lead into what he came here to ask.

For once he was at a complete loss for words and he gulped as the pause stretched out uncomfortably.

"So…" Sarah probed curiously, "what's up?"

Chuck's mouth was suddenly Sahara desert-level dry and he licked his lips fruitlessly. He looked around for something - anything - to comment on in their usual pithy way that would help him stall until he could find the right way to ask.

"You want to go on a date sometime?" he heard himself say. His mouth acting without the permission from his brain that was so important in this moment. "I mean a date without aliases and spy gear and a mission?"

"Like… a real date?" Sarah asked simply with no outward indication of her reaction to the thought.

A simple "Yeah," was all that Chuck could muster. He was as terrified to ask the question but now that it was out there he was equally terrified of her answer.

"Chuck…ahem..." Sarah cleared her throat and leaned in, lowering her voice. "I'm still a CIA agent, and there are a hundred reasons why I shouldn't do that..."

The direction this seemed to be going was every thing he had feared. Everything he had expected but foolishly hoped against.

"What do you have to lose?" Chuck's mouth acted on instinct again when his brain was certain that all hope was lost. The truth that they were out of time was suddenly clearer than ever. This was their only chance. And while it was likely true that there was nothing to lose, it was equally true that it couldn't lead to anything substantial. He realized that she could easily counter by asking why they should bother at all but his brain finally caught up and made the best case that he possibly could.

"In a week, you're going to be undercover in some place like Jakarta in a knife fight with some evil-doer, and in that exact moment, you're going to wish that you would've spent one last… night of fun… with me."

Chuck realized that his bravado was somewhat dulled by his hesitation. And the fact that he couldn't control the flare of his nostrils or the hard swallow he made in an attempt to keep his breakfast down. And as none of that escaped the observant woman's keen eye, he resigned himself to the grim reality that his bold, Hail Mary was doomed to its logical and expected failure.

Then he heard the sweetest, most amazing word he had never expected to hear in an uncharacteristically small voice.

"Okay."

He only barely managed to stifle his immediate reaction - some bizarre combination of elation and disbelief - as he felt the butterflies in his stomach migrate to his chest as pins and needles tingled in his arms and a slightly sickly warmth radiated throughout his head and neck. He felt a bit dizzy and realized his face had broken into his widest possible smile when his mouth acted of its own accord again.

"Really?" he heard himself ask, wishing he could pull the question back so that he didn't give her this opportunity to correct herself.

But a tight-lipped smile graced Sarah's face. Partly, he assumed, due to his reaction. But like she had when he though he caught her in a rare moment of spy-free normalcy upon entering, she seemed happy and thankfully her wordless response confirmed her answer.

"Mm-hmm," she hummed, and the sound was as sweet to him as hearing her agree to their date the first time.

"Tonight," he declared, somehow regaining his composure. "Our first real date."

"Or our second first date," Sarah responded.

Chuck smiled at her confirmation that it was a date. And a first date at that, though he didn't dare get ahead of himself and think about what could possibly come next. A do-over of their first date for which she had apologized more than once over the past several months. How many people had a chance at a second first date? Third if they count that day at the pier that they never, ever talk about. The day she agreed to remove herself from reality alongside him, if only for a few hours.

This time would be different. This time they weren't hiding it from anyone. Even themselves. _Especially_ themselves. She said yes. And it had nothing to do with missions, or covers, or any other spy nonsense.

It was real.

And as Chuck moved to leave before he truly and properly freaked out over his improbable success, he confirmed that this outing would be the real thing. His world, not hers. A world where he wanted to show her she not only had a place but a place where she was very, very welcome.

"No gunfight, I promise."

.

TO BE CONTINUED


	34. XXXIV: The Beast of America (5:9)

...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: Episode 201 ("First Date"); pre-date

Contents: The second of two chapters (published separately), both around 5K and not quite to the actual date yet!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also in this chapter, no ownership of _Gravity Falls_ or any songs by (Paul McCartney and) Wings is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXXIII: The Beast of America, Part 5

* * *

.

091: Message to No One (Day 250): Black Lilies and Stiletto Whispers

.

Maison 23, Burbank, CA; May 28, 2008 5:50 pm

.

"Day two hundred and fifty," Sarah spoke into the video recorder sitting on her dresser, hands folded in her lap still dressed in the uniform she had chosen herself for her fake job. Powder blue hoodie, orange tank top, white capris and - she wondered if he had noticed - orange low-top Chuck Taylors with powder blue laces. A blend of the two of them.

"Chuck did what he always does last night. He says 'it's never safe in the car' but the truth is he just can't seem to _stay_ in the car when he sees something that needs to be done. He's been like that for as long as I've known him. Ever since that first night. I just wish he could see himself the way I see him."

Sarah's lip quirked downward a fraction at that. Knowing that he didn't see himself the way she saw him made her wonder exactly how he saw her. Especially as she recalled him later this morning when she had seen him pause outside her cover job to watch her through the window as he often did. At the time she wondered with amusement whether he actually thought she wouldn't notice. Or if he just didn't care if she saw him watching.

No, she knew he wasn't that brash. She knew now that he was mentally preparing himself. That the foolishly brave man who had raced a mountain of a man easily three times his size and easily five times as physically strong to a common goal with no thought of what would happen when they converged upon that goal had been momentarily unable to put one foot in front of the other to simply come inside and ask her a question. At the moment all of her secret fears conspired to wonder whether he was, in fact, afraid of her.

But thinking back on the way she felt when he paused like that and looked in at her working, whenever he did it, and knowing now what he had come to say on this specific occasion, she didn't blame him a bit.

"Anyway, he recovered the- recovered a critical piece of- what will replace what he can do. I can't decide if that makes him superfluous or a valuable backup plan. Graham says he wants to use the new base as a monitoring station. That he wouldn't have made that investment and not used it to keep tabs on Chuck. It makes sense but... I just don't know."

She trailed off. Because although she was concerned about his well-being once she was reassigned - very - it was his visit to her cover job this morning that had her rattled.

.

_Sarah tried her best not to reveal that she had been discretely watching him watch her until he approached the counter and reached a distance that more naturally required her attention. At a glance she saw he was greatly troubled by something, maybe even on the edge of panic. Troubled to the extent that his usually rambling, good-natured banter was reduced to a simple, "Hey."_

_His loss for words was unusual and alarming. She wondered if he had finally put it all together and come to say a proper goodbye in case he never had another chance. She didn't think she could handle that in front of all these people in any way other than a completely detached facade that she didn't want to use for a final farewell._

_Like she always did, she offered a smile that convinced him that she was genuinely happy to see him. Because, like always, she was. She knew he couldn't read her mind, and she regretted that such psychic powers would probably be the only way for her to completely convey her thoughts, so like always she tried her best to convey her openness to whatever he came to say with a "Hey," of her own._

_When Chuck asked "So can I be completely honest?" she really had no idea what to expect would come out of his mouth next. But he had that mischievous look in his eye and the corners of her mouth turned up in spite of herself as she tentatively agreed to hear his honesty with a suspicious and drawn out, "Yeah…"_

_Sarah almost burst out laughing when Chuck, after his dramatic setup and all of her fears about what he might say, blurted out, "I miss the Wienerlicious." She felt her cheeks burn with amusement as he made her smile as only he could and he launched into a more familiar, rambling, stream-of-consciousness she often suspected was as much to amuse her as it was to prevent any silences festering or any deeper truths filling them. "I mean, the Bavarian charm and the toxic nacho cheese that you guys had-."_

_"My clothes smelled like sausage," Sarah muttered miserably, finally revealing her biggest complaint. Something trivial she had kept to herself all this time and, although she regretted cutting off Chuck's ramble and not being able to see where it would eventually end up, he once again had her back with just three words that closed the door on her weinergirl days._

_"Nostalgia completely gone," he said with a smile as something - some thought - shook him to his core. Sarah realized that whatever had been on his mind when he had entered had not magically gone away._

_She didn't know where she was going to be in a month. Or even a week or possibly a day._

_All she knew in that moment was that she was going to miss him so incredibly much._

.

"I can call in some markers," Sarah continued speaking into the camera lens. "Keep tabs on the people keeping tabs. Watch for any signs that they see him as a liability. But for now he's free and walking around Burbank. Free to do almost anything he wants."

She practically sighed that last thought toward the inanimate confidant perched on her dresser as its lens gazed emotionlessly back at her without judgment or compassion.

.

_Sarah saw Chuck gulp as the pause stretched out uncomfortably, and she felt compelled to spur him forward. To face whatever he had to say, no matter how painful for both of them._

_"So... what's up?"_

_He seemed thankful that she gave him the push that he needed but no more confident about the words he wanted to say. He licked his lips and looked around the room a bit before suddenly jumping in feet first as he so often did._

_"You want to go on a date sometime?" he blurted suddenly. Then smoothed out his delivery and made his intentions even more clear. "I mean a date without aliases and spy gear and a mission?"_

_"Like a real date?" she responded incredulously before she could stop herself. Of all the things he might have said, for some reason after all this time dancing around their attraction for one another, she had not expected that._

_I took every bit of her years of training to show no outward sign that the sound of blood rushing in her ears had turned down the volume inside the yogurt shop. She saw more than heard his response._

_A simple, "Yeah."_

_He was clearly as terrified to ask the question as she was to hear it._

_"Chuck... " she cleared her throat and then lowered her voice to automatically deliver her empty excuse that she had hidden behind for almost as long as she had known him._

_"I'm still a CIA agent, and there are a hundred reasons why I shouldn't do that..."_

.

"And apparently, what he wants to do..." she sighed deeply again before stating his shocking choice simply, "...is to take me on a date.

"For real this time. No secret agenda like the first time. No pretending it never happened like the second time. And then... I don't really know what comes after that. I really shouldn't but…"

The thought "but I really want to" was left unspoken as she thought about something Chuck had said recently about two fictional star-crossed lovers - one sweet and beautiful and innocent and perfect and the other a survivor but a slave to her distasteful occupation - who met in a French bordello at the dawn of the twentieth century.

_"That's the point, isn't it?" _Chuck had asked her._ "Is love worth the pain if those few moments are all you get?"_

_._

_"What do you have to lose?" Chuck had cut her off and Sarah realized it was a panicked attempt to speak his mind before she could shut him out again._

_"In a week, you're going to be undercover in some place like Jakarta in a knife fight with some evil-doer, and in that exact moment, you're going to wish that you would've spent one last... night of fun with me."_

_As usual, she found his impressions of her fascinating. The way he thought of her as the adventurer she had hoped to be rather than the vicious assassin she had become. The way her true nature - which he knew as well as anyone - didn't seem to resonate with him in the visceral way that it should. The way he was unafraid of her, as though she we not that which she was._

_And it was also adorable the way he began so impassioned until he ran out of steam. As though the night of fun with him somehow paled in comparison to a knife-fight - always a sketchy experience even as skilled as she was - rather than the treat such a night with him would be. A treat that she had sampled under the protective barrier of her cover and would love to experience unfettered by the constant vigilance her job required._

_It wasn't until she watched his nostrils flare and saw him swallow hard that she realized the stakes. Not only was he afraid she would say no, he was afraid it was his last chance._

_And suddenly she was afraid of that too._

_Her almost shy demeanor was entirely genuine as she realized just how important this was to him. How important SHE was to him. And she was as surprised as he was when a simple "Okay," slipped from her mouth._

_"Really?" he clarified incredulously._

_"Mm-hmm," she hummed through her smile, not daring to speak lest any of those hundred reasons slipped out just as easily and ruined everything._

_"Tonight," he declared, perking up from his near panic at her possible final rejection. "Our first real date."_

_"Or our second first date," she offered without elaborating that even their date that first night had been more real to her than he could possibly know._

_"No gunfight, I promise," he smiled again as though that wasn't always a possibility for her._

_As though a night of fun with her - dinner and dancing, he clarified as he left - was a treat for him rather than the constant state of danger his life had become from the moment he had met her._

.

"It's like he said, maybe this is all the time we'll ever have. It's ours to use or ours to waste. He was so terrified I'd say no. It was adorable. There was no way I was going to say no, it's just... I was just... I was terrified to say yes," she finished in a near whisper.

Their second first date, she thought. How many people could say that?

Third if they count that day at the pier that they never, ever talk about.

The day that exists only in her mind as her first real date of any kind since she joined Graham's merry band of assassins at the age of fifteen. Or before.

Moving with every con as a child, having a tragically undatable brace face in her attempt to rejoin the world of "normal people" and then resigned to a life as a non-person, no real boy - no non-spy, non-one-night-stand, person who actually wanted to spend time with _her_ \- had asked her out on a real date before or since.

That sudden revelation washed over her and a gunfight actually sounded far less frightening.

A blank expression overtook her face and the color left her cheeks as she leaned in to turn off the camera as she gave voice to that revelation under her breath.

"I don't know how to do this."

.

* * *

.

After a shower and several false starts on selecting an outfit for the evening, pacing in animal print underwear she still had no idea whether anyone but her would know she was wearing, Sarah finally admitted something she had always had trouble admitting.

She needed help.

Sarah retrieved the barely used XBox from under her bed, plugged it in and connected it to her television. She configured the system and connected to the game server.

She and Carina had maintained their signal of coffee purchases on their combined account to provide rough locations and statuses. And Carina kept sending those stupid LOL Cats pictures from and to their shared email to confirm she was OK. Sarah shouldn't have said anything about it because Carina had upped the absurdity level. The most recent was of a cat wearing a faux business suit under its chin and across its forelegs as though its front half was a cat-person, with the caption "i can has promoshun?" across the top of the photo in white block letters with a person's hand helping to dramatically pose the cat.

But the XBox was the vehicle for any back and forth conversations. They had chatted a few times this way when they were able to connect. After watching Chuck and Morgan play various online games on the XBox while she and Ellie chatted about work (Ellie's real job and Sarah's cover job), Sarah had suggested this untraceable channel to Carina so they wouldn't have to use up their burner phones.

They didn't have a check-in scheduled but Sarah knew how to reach her. Sarah knew her friend was somewhere in Eastern Europe and it was already a late night for her there. Carina was working interdepartmentally which meant she was spending less time in the regions where she had made her bones. That meant less time doing the sort of work she had been blackmailed into when she was barely twenty years old. Less risky and less of a burden on her soul.

It also meant more surveillance to inform less frequent undercover work. The old in-and-out as Carina often said with a wink, in this case _not_ meaning a mission that put you in a position where the mark thought _that_ was on the table and you really couldn't safely get out of it. Surveillance meant down time and Carina always had her gaming console on these days as she had found a new hobby.

Sarah searched the hundreds of active Call of Duty games on the server and found Carina's handle and the restricted-access match she had initiated. Sarah requested access and, once granted, typed simply "SU?"

Carina's reply was immediate but just as short and cryptic: "stat"

After Sarah typed a "1" to indicate that, despite her existential crisis, her status was OK, Carina provided her answer.

"K. give me a sec to wrap up."

Sarah left the Call of Duty arena, noting that based on game statistics Carina and her head-to-head opponent did not seem to be battling at all. She then inserted the Stealth Underlords game she had bought out of the discount bin as instructed and indicated by her "SU", logged into the waiting room and initiated a head-to-head match, the only game currently active on this game's server.

Carina had suggested this specific game for some reason and they had only connected a handful of times for brief discussions, mostly about what each was hearing in the intelligence community given there were a lot of double agents in play right now. She saw some of the appeal that Chuck saw in escaping from the monotony of refreshing her language skills or working out to maintain her physical condition but still didn't play for fun.

She and Carina had been interrupted by surveillance triggers on Carina's mission or her own calls regarding Intersect related missions but usually due to the game, with its notorious instability simply crashing. Due to its quirkiness she noticed but thought nothing of the slight misalignment of the second period in the ellipsis that appeared dot-by-dot after the word "Loading". The second dot was positioned slightly below the line of the other two when all three appeared before they disappeared and repeated their sequence but she chalked it up to the game's poor quality and went to wash her face.

She soon heard a ping followed by several other varied sound effects, finished what she was doing and returned to find several messages on the screen in the game's poor English:

[StiletoWispRED has entried the arena] when Carina arrived.

[StiletoWispRED has machine guned you]…

[StiletoWispRED has stabbed you]…

[StiletoWispRED has blown you up] all indicating Carina's attempts to both test whether the game was about to collapse again and get Sarah's attention if she wasn't simply lag-locked.

[StiletoWispRED killed by own rocket] as Carina attempted a rocket jump the game did not support.

When Sarah returned the other character was now pressed up against her own avatar and jumping up and down. It took a second for Sarah to realize the other avatar was essentially humping hers.

[BLackLiLy] ...whatre you doing?...

[StiletoWispRED] …Hey. Checking whether you were there, Sorry it took a minute. Got caught up in a COD thing…

[BLackLiLy] …Kicking the asses of fake people again?…

[StiletoWispRED] …I'll have you know it is excellent, no-risk strategy testing. In fact, a buddy of mine wanted to run an assault scenario by me for a massive team play level. Just doing a walk through…

[BLackLiLy] …You? And what buddy?…

[StiletoWispRED] …I'll also have you know that I am officially a ranked player among those who keep track of that stuff. People are even recruiting me for team play. I might be one of his snipers…

[BLackLiLy] …Thought you were keeping a low profile. This buddy of yours recruiting you?…

[StiletoWispRED] …Don't worry. I'm strictly lone wolf or gun for hire. Like I am for reals. And, no. He's just a nice guy that helped me out when I was fumbling around with everything…

[StiletoWispRED] …Sort of awestruck that I ranked up so fast. I gave him a total overkill attack plan to take out a bunch of guys he can't seem to beat…

[StiletoWispRED] …He's going to have to recruit a bunch of players to pull it off but should be fun. It's strategically ridiculous, though. I told him I'd try to make it but you know how it is…

[StiletoWispRED] …Can't make any promises. So what's up?…

[BLackLiLy] …Just that actually. Promises…

[StiletoWispRED] …go on…

[BLackLiLy] …assignment might be ending and I'm just thinking about things…

[BLackLiLy] …about who I am and how I am and people around me always getting hurt…

[StiletoWispRED] …bout time you got out of there; end game?…

[BLackLiLy] …looks clean but what happens after that I just don't know…

[StiletoWispRED] …sounds serious, reservations about your usual scorched earth approach…

[BLackLiLy] …can you call?…

[StiletoWispRED] …which…

Sarah pulled one of her five fully charged burner phones out of the shoebox at random, checked the number she had written on the back as she powered it on, and smirked when she saw that it was number three.

[BLackLiLy] …Charlie… she typed to designate the third of the five; Alpha through Echo.

[StiletoWispRED] …is it abooooooooot Charlie, you man-eater you?… Carina teased.

[BLackLiLy] …shut up and call me…

The message [StiletoWispRED has left the arena] showed at the top of the screen and Sarah heard a rapidly increasing beeping followed by her on-screen avatar being launched across the screen followed by '[unknown] has killed you with a grenade' prior to disconnecting and stowing the equipment as the flip-phone she had left on the bed began to ring.

.

* * *

.

"Pale Horse, secure," Sarah answered the phone, confirming her identity in a way only Carina and a couple of others knew but only reinforcing her misgivings about Death taking a night off for dinner and dancing with a nice guy who was under the delusion that she was something more.

"Red Horse, secure. We cool?" Carina responded, asking for an additional confirmation that Sarah was not contacting her under duress.

"Disco," Sarah cringed at Carina's 'cool as disco' validation even though it fit the bill as an unusual but plausible response.

Carina sighed slightly with relief and asked, "What's up, blondie?"

"Can we have a serious conversation?"

"I dunno, can we?"

Sarah decided to be the mature one and break the cycle of sarcasm, "I'm not sure what I'm doing anymore, Carina."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Graham's had me jetting all over, taking care of business, the things I used to be so good at, still am so good at, but once I'm done all I wanna do is get back home as quickly as I can-"

"This 'home' of yours being…?"

"See? That's exactly it. Since when do I have a home?" Sarah looked around her as she walked to the large picture window "It's just a hotel room."

Carina tried not to laugh at her friend's obvious deflections and mostly succeeded with only a barely detectable snort.

"So, are you seriously trying to tell me that after a mission all you can think about is a hotel room? Think outside your walls, babe."

"Well, Burbank is nice enough," Sarah said distractedly, gazing out on her adopted city for nearly a year. "Not what I thought I'd consider home-base or where I wanted to hang up my spurs. Not like St. Tropez is for you."

"Blondie? Can I tell you a secret?" Carina settled in to share an uncomfortable truth, thinking she saw some of what Sarah was getting at.

She had once thought it possible for her too and had then abandoned the idea. She had convinced herself that not only did spies not fall in love - romantically or platonically with people or even with places - due to the suspicious nature of their work but also that spies were such broken people that they were no longer capable of it.

Seeing Sarah in Burbank, still holding those views herself, with people around her who cared about her - one of them deeply enough to die for her - had been enough for Carina to question those so-called truths. For Sarah and herself. She was no closer to having any of the answers than Sarah was, but from her former life, she knew that 'home' was often not a place.

"I've never even been to St. Tropez," Carina confessed. "I saw it on a postcard in an airport once. Thought it was pretty and I've never run a mission there so its untainted. That's all. It's just a place. I have no attachment to it. No real reason to go there. Not like what you have waiting for you back to Burbank."

Carina baited the hook to try to draw out what was really bothering her friend but Sarah was a slippery little fish.

"Carina, there's nothing for me here. Nothing real. I'll leave and be on to the next one and everyone here who thought they knew some hidden truth about me will just see me for what I really am."

It wasn't _just_ Chuck. Everyone had welcomed her here. Especially Ellie and even Casey.

Sarah sighed at her own foolishness in becoming attached to any of them, "It's stupid of me to think I can have something good when I know I have to leave."

"You could come back," Carina offered. "Maybe even come back often. Regularly. Question is, is that what you want?"

"I don't know what I want. I've never let myself think about it. Not really. Too afraid it'll cause me to mess up. Or that, if I do mess up, I'll have lost more than I should have. So I just cruise through life and hope one day something will work out where I don't have to be on guard all the time and can laugh and… I dunno, be free I guess… I don't know what it _looks_ like or if I can even have it. Or even be satisfied with it."

"Have you had some moments in Burbank where you felt like it might be possible?"

Sarah sat down heavily in a chair by the window. Her elbow found the table surface and her brow found the cradle of her hand as she considered the question. The glimpses of that life she had seen so many times with the people here before the reality of her nature and the reality of the situation shattered her illusions.

She had been quiet far too long for Carina's liking. "Sarah, what's really going on?" she asked.

Sarah took a deep breath and answered.

"I have a date in half an hour."

"Like, a real date?" Carina clarified out of shock and immediately kicked herself.

"That's what I said. Crazy right?" Sarah flopped back in her chair and tucked one leg under her.

"Wow. Umm, no. Not crazy. And the lucky guy is…?" Carina probed with obvious suspicions of the answer but wanting more of the supporting details.

"You know him."

"So… Casey?"

"Har har. Be serious, please. I'm freaking out."

"Why? He adores you," Carina stated as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. Because it was.

"See? That should be a _good_ thing but all I can think about is how unfair it is to him that it can't really lead to anything lasting-"

"Look, you want to go, right?" Carina demanded in a suck-it-up tone.

"That's the problem though, right?" Sarah asked. A combination of disbelief at his foolishness for liking her, her unworthiness of it, and the ramifications of what would undoubtedly be a 'successful' date swirling in her mind. "I want to. I mean, I really want to. But its been this thing hanging over us for so long. Such a big expectation. And I don't want to do anything to make it worse when I leave..."

"Whoa. Hold up. You still haven't done the nasty with that boy, have you? And double whoa, why now? And _why_ are you leaving again?"

"It's wrapping up. They might have an alternative and, if it works out, they're going to cut him loose. I'm kinda…out of excuses."

"Good," Carina declared, understanding some of why Sarah was so afraid of establishing real connections but glad to see her hand forced. "Stop hiding from it. It's a good thing, Sarah. But that is weird... Scary Man not at least keeping him as a backup."

"I know. He'll still be monitored, definitely, but I don't feel like I can just detach myself because something does feel off. That's why I'm gonna stay and keep tabs for a while. Say I'm gonna go off grid and recharge. It's been my longest mission ever so he'd be hard pressed to come up with a lame reason to refuse. And that could be telling too. He'll either let it slide or I'll just ask for forgiveness later. I just need to look like I'm somewhere else so he doesn't catch on."

"No prob. Give the word and I'll clone you. Make you look elsewhere. You can see if Mr. Scary tries to scoop him up. If so, then what? Band on the run?"

"I hate that song," Sarah whined, not taking the bait as to whether she would run with Chuck if the situation demanded it, instead criticizing Carina's preference for classic rock.

"I love it. It's three songs in one! But, for reals, then what?"

"For reals?" Sarah mocked, "You're hanging out online too much. You sound like one of his coworkers."

"Nice volley. No return. Stop deflecting. Then what?"

"I don't know," Sarah admitted. "I don't want to think about it. I just want to think everything is going to be OK."

"You know what your old man said about wishing in one hand and shitting in the other?"

Sarah sighed heavily, "I really don't need con man wisdom or spy platitudes or any other paranoid bullshit right now, okay? I have enough of that in my head already."

"Know what? You're right. You're going to have to pick a type of crazy and run with it. We'll deal with whatever else happens when it happens. I'll be on standby no matter what. Clearly you _want_ to go on this date so…just focus on tonight. Tell me about your plans."

"It's just dinner. Dinner and dancing," Sarah smiled despite herself at the possibility of reenacting their first date but doing it right this time.

"Oooooo-kaaaaay, I know that you are fully capable of both consuming food and shaking your booty. What's really going on? You've known this guy for almost a year. You like him. He likes you. It's not rocket science, sweetie."

"But it's real!" Sarah blurted out before she could stop herself and Carina paused before she answered, some of her long held suspicions about her friend confirmed.

"Sarah…" Carina's tone turned much more compassionate before she caught herself and found a way to soften the question with humor, "Is this your first real date with a real guy that you really like?... For reals?"

Sarah rolled her eyes at Carina emphasizing the word 'real' in every variation she used but admitted, "Yes. You know it is."

"I suspected but we never really talked about it directly," Carina left that topic there.

She knew enough about Sarah's history to have guessed that she had never dated and enough about her occupation to know that what passed for dating in their line of work really wasn't. She had seen her hook up with guys with no intention of getting to know them and knew about Bryce. Sarah wasn't a virgin by any stretch of the imagination but Carina had also suspected, and now knew, that Sarah had never just gone out on a normal date with a normal guy.

"Throw out everything you think you know. Throw out the manual. Throw out the tactics. Throw out everything you thought you had to do to survive this past decade. The most important thing about tonight... Remember this every time you're second guessing or about to freak out... You trust this guy. More importantly, as the objective advisor, I trust this guy. Just be."

"You make it sound so easy," Sarah replied skeptically.

_Far from it_, Carina thought. It was going to be the toughest thing her friend had done in a long while. Turning off everything she thought she knew and resisting the urge to do all the things she was trained to do.

"Just be you. He already likes you. I think he has pretty good taste. And just try to open yourself up to the possibility of something good in your life."

Carina thought to herself that maybe she should take her own advice for once. But that she'd also wait and see what happened with her friend and a guy who seemed like a good bet before she made any foolish mistakes of her own.

"I better go get ready," Sarah said simply, but she felt at least somewhat better about tonight now that her friend had talked her off the proverbial ledge. "Thanks, Carina."

"Anytime. I want details at some point though. Have fun."

"I'll try."

"And wear something slinky!" Carina suggested as she hung up.

Sarah rolled her eyes but thought of just the dress for tonight…

When Chuck arrived to pick her up just before the agreed upon time and asked whether she was ready to go, she only spared a quick glance at her pistol and a fleeting thought at the fact that she had hidden no weapons of any kind on her person. Just for this one night.

When he took her by the hand to walk toward the elevator, she felt one of those Burbank-moments wash over her where she sensed a glimmer of what she could be. Realized that even though this was unfamiliar territory she truly trusted the man she had chosen to show her a world she no longer understood. If she ever had.

For once, in that moment, the things in which she had once found some sense of fulfillment since childhood - the adrenaline rush of cheating death or the smug satisfaction of outsmarting a ruthless opponent - were revealed to be pale substitutes for something she had been searching for all her life to fill a hole in her soul that, even now, she could not quite define.

For once, the fact that she - one of the world's most deadly people trusted with protecting the world's most valuable intelligence asset - was unarmed didn't make her feel naked or afraid and, in that moment, she completely understood Chuck's initial reaction upon hearing he would be able to reclaim his life.

She felt free.

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: As we say farewell to the Weinerlicious, I'm curious whether anyone here lives in Mackinaw City, Michigan? I only ask because there actually is a restaurant called Wienerlicious there. Right on the corner of E Central Ave and S Nicolet St, about five blocks from where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.

They have dogs, brats and Italian sausage. Check out the menu. "The Mackinaw" is a hot dog wrapped in bacon with cheese sauce. Sign me up! I'd probably get some BBQ sauce on the side (listed under "trimmings") and dip the whole thing. Maybe some jalapeños too. (Thanks Internet research-vortex and Google Maps!)

.

Wanna know the most unbelievable aspect of this episode? (It's not the kill order; and, honestly, that is a staple of spy fiction so let's not get too wrapped around the axle on it or assume too much about this story's Casey just yet, 'K?) The most unbelievable element is the idea that Morgan is gathering 50 gamers for one side of a multiplayer CoD game!

Besides Quake: Arena, I know little about competitive online gaming but I can use the Internet and apparently 9-on-9 is the current limit for CoD. It may have been fewer eight years ago. So the Creative License Card was played. I have more of them in my battle deck.

.

Finally, I am somewhat disappointed in the fact (and in myself by extension) that Sarah's conversations with Carina so dismally fail the Bechdel-Wallace test. I'll have to appease myself with the hope that, although the conversations start or end there or are initiated due to something to do with Chuck, they at least touch on larger issues about Sarah's life in general.

That was my intention with this last part - yes, Sarah wants advice for her first real date ever but I wanted to make it at least partly about a desire to reclaim her life. When she later says she "wants to be a real person again", what really was the last time that she WAS a "real person"?

I think (at least here in this story which asserts that she DID skip out for 'adventures with Dad') it was at around seven years old.


	35. XXXV: The Beast of America (6:9)

...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: Two chapters; one here (nearly 6K words) and the second next time (over 7K)

A/N: Hopefully everyone eventually noticed both of the last two chapters which were posted on the same day. Some initially missed one or the other. Unfortunately it seems that if you do that within 24 (?) hours of each other the second one doesn't "pop" the story back to the top to indicate a new chapter. Check Ch 33 &amp; 34 to make sure you didn't miss one! Especially since they go together and would have been presented that way had the site cooperated. That in mind, I am weary of fighting a losing battle against the site to post über long installments as I did before. As such, this is the first chapter of what was planned as a two chapter installment (but the site kept freaking out at around 10K when I used to do twice that easily) and the second will follow later in the week when I clean up the formatting.

Due to the wealth of iconic scenes in this episode, some of these chapters are a little more "canon dialogue" heavy than I prefer. Perhaps the success of those scenes is due to their simplicity so I tried to only embellish them slightly and focus more on the unspoken but my intention is for it NOT to read like a transcript even though some sections pretty much are.

Of course, I also never intended for this episode's "interpretation" to be scattered over this many installments or take this long to release in total.

On that note, sorry it's taking so long to put a bow on this episode but it's a very important one and a new job, S6 of GoT, the Penguins' unlikely Stanley Cup run (seriously, if you had seen them play earlier this season...) and a truly dismal news cycle were NOT conducive to writing!

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also in this installment (this chapter or next), no ownership of Berry Gordy's _The Last_ _Dragon_, Monty Python's _Holy Grail_, Warren Zevon's _Werewolves of London_, or Arnold Schwarzenegger's _Terminator 2_ is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXXV: The Beast of America, Part 6

* * *

.

092: Eyes Unclouded by Ambition

.

The Last Dragon, Chinese Restaurant, Burbank, CA; Wednesday, May 28, 2008 9:05 pm

.

"I know this place doesn't seem like much..." Chuck had grown visibly more nervous as they approached the restaurant but Sarah cut off his unnecessary apologies.

"Chuck, stop. It's fine. It's more than fine. They do have food, right?" Sarah smiled as she asked.

She hadn't shared it with him, and maybe she would one day, but their formative years weren't all that different. Ellie had mostly sheltered Chuck from the reality of it just as her father had tried to do with her. But in terms of not being completely sure from where your next meal would come, they both had that inherent appreciation that something didn't have to be ridiculously expensive to be a treat.

"Funny," Chuck reacted with a smile of his own to her lowest of possible expectations that a restaurant simply _have_ food. It always warmed her soul to know that, unlike many others, he found her wry sense of humor even detectable much less amusing. "I just would have liked to take you to a fancier place. I mean, the way you look tonight... And your hair-"

"The way I- Wha- what about my hair?" Sarah asked, recovering from just the tiniest reactionary jolt and managing to restore her cool facade. There was training in play, no doubt about it, but it had also felt like a natural reaction to a natural response. The mild flush of heat at a combination of tiny emotions; uncertainty, embarrassment, even mild panic. All completely unjustified - she _knew_ that - but all, also, completely new.

She had never cared this much about what anyone thought of her, especially outside of the context of simply getting them to do what she wanted, and having explicitly cracked open this aspect of their relationship Sarah found that all those concerns - about what someone she liked and admired as much as him thought of her - were irrationally intensified.

"The curls," Chuck said simply while gesturing vaguely and overtly admiring her handiwork again. And, like always, he managed to defuse her anxiety with a word or two and a casual gesture allowing her to simply appreciate that he appreciated her efforts to look a little bit different for him tonight. "You took the time to do something different and extra elegant to look extra nice, as if that was even possible. Just... you're Spago and I'm a five dollar footlong..."

And if Chuck hadn't been so caught up in his unnecessarily self-conscious and self-deprecating rambling he wouldn't have missed the playful, deliberately saucy glance at his belt buckle when he said 'footlong', attempting to break through his rambling so she could somehow express just how far off the mark he was.

"...You just look extra nice and... And I don't think I would actually be able to tell if you were disappointed. I've seen you put up with a lot. Seen you take one of Ellie's well-intentioned interrogations without showing what you're really thinking. Just... Don't suffer in silence, 'K?"

"Chuck?" Sarah cupped his jaw in her right hand and moved closer, slithering up against him and watching him gulp. She hadn't even planned to do it, it just felt natural. He looked down at her with those rich whiskey-amber eyes of his as she pressed against him and she softened her voice as her taut belly melted into his hip with the comforting feel of his body heat against her.

"You're assuming far too much about what's important to me tonight." Sarah breathed as her hand gravitated to the nape of his neck where she played with one of his adorable curls, smiling to herself when it rebelled against any earlier attempts to tame it at her slightest touch, leaving an unruly curl out of place behind his left ear.

"You asked me to go out with you and _that's_ what I agreed to," Sarah continued now that she had his full attention. "The rest is just details. I'm not that demanding... I don't think.," she ended with hesitancy. She wasn't really sure if she was demanding or not, but she certainly didn't expect a five-star restaurant. And she didn't need it.

It did raise the question of just what kind of life she would live outside of the Agency. Not having to worry about little things like where your next meal would come from. Ignoring for the moment that by being comped and paid for the things she had done, in a nearly literal sense, she had fought for her meals this past decade.

She had grown up poor with fleeting moments of ill-advised, wasteful indulgence after a successful con but a younger her had also once wanted those opulent, glamorous trappings of what she thought a spy's life - or, at the time, a successful con artist's - would be. She wanted to think it was a convenient coping mechanism; that she could further pass the blame onto Graham and others for tempting her with such things. But the truth was that she once _wanted_ that life. Desired comfort and luxury and, at the very least, the reliability of not finding herself wanting for the basics of survival.

Somewhere along the way the cold reality had set in and in every elegant ballroom she really just saw avenues of escape; in every five course meal, a hundred servers any one of whom could be a poisoner.

By the time she eventually saw behind the curtain - saw that the promised lifestyle was a mirage - she had already paid the price. Was the question whether she could really want or be happy with a simple life? Or was it whether she could ever deserve such a thing?

Her eyes returned to Chuck's face where he was staring back at her in that knowing way when her brain had taken a detour like that, smiling at either her acceptance of a budget dinner or reading all her more unsettling thoughts. She wasn't sure which.

She was however very sure that in the tiny entry vestibule, with her wrist still on his shoulder and fingers in his hair as they both shifted a bit to let two entering employees wearing white busboy jackets pass, that her lips were an inch from his now. And she felt his hands against her hips, long fingers splayed and the intensity of each fingertip practically burning through the fabric of her dress as she moved to close the distance...

"Two for dinner?" called the elderly Asian woman, seemingly unimpressed with their attempt to make out at the hostess stand while they waited. Or at least that had absolutely been Sarah's intention.

Chuck nodded to the old woman and moved to follow her as the woman simply turned on the spot with two laminated menus clutched to her chest and headed toward what would soon be their table. He held out his hand to Sarah as they both began to move, lowered his voice and said, "I just want you to have a good time."

Sarah took his hand and briefly clutched his arm to briefly pull him closer as they walked, releasing him just as quickly after she put a wide smile on his face by practically whispering, throwing caution to the wind even as she questioned the wisdom of saying it:

"With you? I always do."

.

* * *

.

"I don't know what you were so worried about," Sarah said absently as she perused her menu. "They have crispy duck so... Victory is mine."

She said the last in a flat, deadpan way that she thought matched King Arthur's inflections perfectly and Chuck usually picked up on her movie references. Not least of all because they were usually from movies they had recently watched together.

She hadn't made one of the more obvious references - anyone could do that - but his lack of reaction to that goofy Monty Python movie when they had only watched it because he and Morgan had been reenacting that very Black Knight scene recently when she walked into the Buy More to bring him lunch was... Unusual.

"Chuck," she prompted as he stared blankly at the menu, gripping it tightly. "Crispy duck for me. Do you know what you're going to do?"

Chuck looked up at her then, sat back and with a big sigh said, "I used to think I was going to do a lot of things. I used to think a lot of things were important, you know? Graduating with honors or just making Ellie proud by graduating at all. Running my own software company. Making a ton of money and retiring young. Paying off Ellie's student loans with enough left over for racing yachts to defend the worlds oldest international sporting trophy…"

Of course, the changes in his life were what was on his mind, and she tried not to be offended. After all, he couldn't help but be selfless most of the time. His first thought being taking care of the sister who had taken care of a younger him was proof of that. But then the reason for the nervousness she had seen in his hands was revealed as he brought it all full-circle, saying "But I think- I think that all pales in comparison to just- now I just want to take you dancing."

Sarah beamed at him. Just the thought that taking her dancing meant more than all those dreams that had spawned the honestly slightly douchey Charles Carmichael persona - all those possibilities that would soon be restored to him at least in this moment - made it clear that this night was just as important - just as nerve-wracking - to him as it was to her.

Which was why, of all the words she could find to say, she was disappointed that her mouth and brain had apparently agreed upon something completely mundane: "I meant what are you going to do about dinner."

"Oh! I, uhh... Dumplings. Dumplings, I think. And maybe that crispy duck."

Attempting to recover from her mediocre response, Sarah scrunched her nose and gave a small, brisk shake of her head. "Get something else. Something tasty. So we can share."

"Maybe I'll just get a big dish of beef chow mein," he said as he scanned the menu with just the right cadence and enunciation, running 'get-a-big' together into a monotone pseudo-word and a staccato 'beef chow mein' with excessive space between them.

Sarah smiled and was going to make a comment about his hair being perfect but, of course, it wasn't. It was just as barely tamed as their first first date and she thought about how much had changed since that first night. And how much had not.

One thing that had changed is that she never would have recognized that _Werewolves_ _of London_ reference prior to meeting Chuck. Or knowingly quoted _The Holy Grail_. Or noticed his Han Solo reference when he recovered the Cipher last night even though she hadn't remarked upon it. The absurdity should have given her pause but instead emboldened her. She knew this man and really, really liked him.

She smiled saucily as she revealed - if only to herself - that she had decided tonight would play out much as she had intended that first night when this same man had charmed her over a relatively cheap dinner and she turned her thoughts to the planned change of venue to a dance floor where she had stunned him into silence that first night; a field of battle more conducive to thoroughly seducing him for reasons entirely her own.

"Better eat up, then," she grinned wickedly. "You're gonna need your energy on that dance floor."

.

* * *

.

"Wow, this food is good," Sarah said as she slurped up a side of noodles she had substituted for rice based on Chuck's lyrical inspiration before asking, "So how'd you hear about this place, anyway?"

"Morgan, as a matter of fact," Chuck informed her. "The man has a black belt in dumplings. I trust any recommendation he gives me for food items less than ten dollars."

"So our first date is a Morgan recommendation?" Sarah was actually strangely intrigued by the mostly useless but undeniable skill set Morgan possessed for such things. A bloodhound's sense for finding near-gourmet quality food at bargain prices apparently was on the list and this Last Dragon may have been a replacement for the Bamboo Dragon - one dragon for another - as the latter had been closed up shortly after they discovered it was a front for the Chinese Triad.

She hadn't noticed sizzling shrimp on this menu so perhaps Morgan had some other direct replacement...

"Wow, no faith in the little bearded man," Chuck observed even though that wasn't entirely the case. She just found Morgan's so-called strengths to be esoteric at best as Chuck continued. "Okay. I think you should know he's always been supportive of our fake relationship. And he's never found it remotely unbelievable that a guy like me could be dating, umm... You know..."

"What?" Sarah simply prompted Chuck to continue, realizing after she said it that he was as locked in on the nature of their relationship as he had seemed to be off the mark earlier. Sometimes she marveled at the leaps his mind made, completely unassociated with it being an observable symptom of why his mind was so well suited to the Intersect.

"Umm... you know. You." Chuck said, as though one word explained everything.

"What about me?" Sarah teased.

She had gotten the gist, having become accustomed to the meaning Chuck could instill in a single word. But now she was flirting with him a bit, giving her hair a slight shake and deliberately escorting a stray noodle between her lips with her tongue.

"You're really going to make me say it, aren't you?" Sarah confirmed with a grin that, yes, she was going to make him explicitly say whatever he was trying to infuse into the subtext they usually used. The subtext they usually hid behind. She didn't want to do that tonight.

"You- wow, okay. Fine. All right, we'll play it your way," Chuck conceded as he put down his utensils, dried his clammy hands on his pants and turned his attention completely to her rather than divided between her and the meal they were sharing. He looked - there was no word but "lovingly" for it - at her and tried to fully voice his thoughts clearly; an oddity for them.

"A girl like you," he led with. "Or more appropriately," he corrected himself "a woman like you."

Better.

"Considering the fact that you could probably kick the ass of everyone in this joint. And a... a smart one at that. Not to mention cool and..."

He paused long enough to allow her to consider just how much he considered parts of her beyond the external appearance. His lack of ego at her being his protector. That someone as smart as him recognized her intelligence despite her habitual tendency to minimize how much she revealed. That he actually thought the dorky reject she had seen staring back in the mirror as a teen - or even earlier tonight as she dressed for their date - was somehow now cool.

He then took a deep breath before taking her breath away with two common words given uncommon meaning by his earnest delivery: "extremely beautiful."

"And, and you can stop me anytime with the compliments if they're becoming, you know-

Sarah chuckled as he tried to break the unexpected seriousness of their conversation. "No. No, that was very sweet."

"Sweet? Golly gee, thanks for making me feel like I'm eight," Chuck joked good-naturedly.

"Well, you're not so bad yourself," Sarah tried to return the compliment and felt she had failed miserably.

At that, Chuck sat his lanky frame back in his almost too-small chair with a James-Dean-worthy coolness that he could not have pulled off if it had been at all intentional and, probably thinking he had effectively deflected from the earlier seriousness of his compliments to her, offered the perfect response.

"Please..." said in a 'give-me-a-break' fashion followed by what Sarah regarded as an undeniable truth, "...I'm fantastic."

In a moment she would let him off the hook when he asked a harmless question about what Casey would think of them out on a date, but right now she wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. Wasn't about to blow another opportunity to tell him what she truly thought of him in return for his compliments of her.

And he had given her the means to say so as efficiently and memorably as he often expressed himself. Because he _was_ fantastic and there were many things she didn't yet dare say but it was long past time that he knew she thought so.

So she looked him in the eye, allowed her demeanor to turn completely serious, and confirmed his joking assessment of himself as succinctly as she could:

"Yeah... You are."

.

* * *

.

After lighter conversation and finishing their meals, Chuck handed Sarah her fortune cookie, cracked open his, and extracted a little slip of paper.

"Huh," he huffed, as he looked at it.

Sarah asked, "What does yours say?"

He held up the slip of paper to show that it was blank on one side and then flipped it over to show that the other side was blank as well.

"Funny to find _this_ in a place called The Last Dragon. A fortune cookie without a fortune. I suppose it was written by a master who does not exist."

"Well that's... Disturbing," Sarah commented as a slight chill ran up her neck at the implications of Chuck having no future even though a cookie revealing such a thing to her was a ridiculous notion. As though it wasn't just some factory defect. Although it was strange that such a defect would find it's way to Chuck unless… but that was ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the unnerving comments of a Chinese agent months earlier who had said to her: _Your future relies on his safety as much as his own future does._

Her usually more reliable Spidey-sense was kicking in - glimmers of which she had felt earlier but wrote off as nervousness - and she wondered why she hadn't given it more thought before.

Chuck's future.

Despite the fact that Graham had been explicit about the importance of Chuck's continued safety. Maybe _because_ Graham had been so explicit about it. She should have been on guard _especially_ because Graham had been so explicit about it.

Was Chuck's future about to be restored to him, as they had been assuming?

Or was it still in doubt? A man without a fortune. A fate unknowable even to a cookie.

She was being ridiculous.

Chuck, on the other hand, had been giving a great deal of thought about what was next in his life. How he could take back the control that had been taken away from him. The control he had _given_ away long before the Intersect when he fell apart after Stanford.

The part of the fortune cookie quote about fortune cookies without fortunes and masters who did not exist which he had not said out loud: 'to find a solution to a problem whose answer you already know'.

The 'Terminator' sequel proclamation that broke the logic of the franchise by breaking its original fourth dimension causality and then negating itself in the next sequel: "No Fate but What we Make"… admittedly more problematic in a universe that relies on future time travel to dictate present events and then claiming that same time stream can be disrupted but maybe, possibly, applicable to his own situation.

A hundred other examples of fate and destiny and force of will and whether that individual freewill was essential… or futile. All that pop-philosophy flashed through his mind in an instant, and rather than trying to make sense of the thought process, he roused Sarah from her own simply 'disturbing' musings as he processed the repercussions of it all out loud.

"Maybe. Or maybe... Maybe it means something else."

"Like what?"

"Like maybe I have to stop hoping everything will work out and make it work out. Take action. Own my fortune. Claim it. Whatever yours says, I doubt it will come true unless you want it to. Unless you want it to enough to make it happen."

Sarah looked at the fortune cookie in her own hand, irrationally - especially because she didn't believe in fate or fortunes - afraid that hers would be blank too signifying some awful fate for both of them.

She and Chuck had denied this connection for long enough in the name of their duty - in her own desire to keep him safe - and the rest of Mei Ling's comment to her rang in her memory: _It is a great burden the things we deny ourselves for something more important than our own lives or happiness, is it not?_

It was absurd, so she cracked open the cookie and smiled when the slip of paper was not blank but instead contained the usual random and meaningless content. Her cookie revealing her lucky numbers and the Chinese word for 'Owl' ('Māutóuyīng', of course. Literally 'cat head hawk' thank you very much...)

Then she gamely flipped it over and read her fortune silently to herself twice, unaware of the stunned look on her face until Chuck probed her back to awareness.

"So does it say where you're, uh, going next? Your new mission?"

"Actually, it does," she joked to hide how unnerved she had been by five simple words hidden on a slip of paper inside a cookie.

"Really?"

"No, not really," she playfully deflected before considering the reality of his question. "Besides, it doesn't work that way. They'll probably give me a new cover, and move me as far away from here as possible."

She shrugged and frowned despite herself, looking down to pick at the crumbs of the lemon- scented cookie itself. Delivery mechanism for a taunt from the universe. It wasn't as though she could do what the cookie had suggested. It wasn't as though she had a choice.

It was always going to end like this.

"What if they didn't?" Chuck asked irrationally optimistically, shattering her pity bubble with a ray of hope. Fragile and flickering and easily avoided but hope nonetheless.

How can she make him understand? Understand that nothing in her life is about what she wants. She gave that up when she became a killer. When she joined Graham's secret army, kept secret even within the context of more typical secret agents. Before that when she and her father ignored the law and common decency to follow the next opportunity; the next con. Maybe the last non-trivial thing she had chosen - the last thing that had been about what _she_ wanted - was her choice to leave her mother to start down that path.

Whether or not she was still being punished for a foolish, insensitive, seven-year old's decision, somewhere along the way she had come to terms with the fact that a choice made nearly twenty years ago led her down a path to a life that was no longer hers.

"Chuck, a CIA officer doesn't get to choose..."

"You know, I-" Chuck interrupted and Sarah now recognized Chuck's full court press. His desperate pleas. But this one had a thread of a rational idea.

"…I still have an awful lot of secrets in my head: the Lindbergh baby," he offered, able even now to make her smile.

"...the formula for New Coke..." Now he was being ridiculous. But maybe she _should_ see if she could be the one to stay here and monitor him. See where things went. Because he was also offering an added incentive. Offering what he wanted, - unlike her, daring to hope - daring to hope it was what she wanted too. Offering what she wanted. Leaning across the table between them and daring her to dare...

"What are you saying, Chuck?" she asked as she began to close the distance.

"What I've always wanted to say, Sarah," and he moved that last inch or two but never had the chance for their lips to meet. Or even to say what he always wanted to say. Another opportunity lost as his eyes began to flutter in that tell-tale way that set her senses to high-alert.

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, not now. Not now. Oh, oh, oh!"

"Chuck, what is it?"

But then she already knew the answer. Knew that she had foolishly ignored her senses, mistaking the intuition that had at times been the only thing that kept her alive for nerves…

Recalling just now the size and manner of the two men in white coats who passed them in the vestibule as they waited to be seated…

Not paying enough attention as one of them hesitated half a beat to close the door rather than allow it to close behind them as any normal person would who wasn't locking them in…

She glanced to the door and her stomach lurched to see that the "Open" sign was now facing inward and probably had been since they entered when she had foolishly shed her armor and arms for the night.

Not realizing that no new patrons had entered after they had and that those who had been there when they were seated had still not left in the normal flow of patrons entering and exiting a restaurant…

Now that she looked, she could guess what Chuck was seeing. Could tell which patrons were picking at their food, barely conversing, keeping their eyes on their plates petrified with fear.

And she could tell which were subtly watching their every move. Pantomiming dates of their own to surveil her and Chuck on theirs. A pit of vipers coiled to strike scattered among the sheep.

How had she been so blinded?

Now that she bothered to look - bothered to stop being a love-struck fool and do her damn job - she found that she already knew the answer before Chuck said it.

"We're surrounded."

.

* * *

.

As usual, she and Chuck had the same thought at the same time, made evident by the question he asked: "Sarah, you have your gun, right?"

"Nope," she answered curtly with frustration in her voice. It was frustration at herself not him but she couldn't help but turn some of that frustration on him when he questioned it. When all she had wanted was to have a nice, normal evening with him. To try to be a normal girl for once in her life.

"You don't bring a gun on a real date," she whispered through her teeth as what seemed like half the occupants of the restaurant surrounded them and the other half cowered at their tables and one of the largest human beings she had ever seen approached their table.

"Hello again, Chuck," the huge black man in the long leather coat said almost affably in a rumbling baritone voice that matched the obvious density of the wall of muscle that he was.

"And you are…" Sarah greeted the man just as cordially while she assessed the situation as well as she could without making it obvious, checking reflections for the enemies behind her as Chuck joined in to make small talk with the man who was clearly here to end their lives very painfully. The only mystery was why they weren't dead already, Sarah subtly challenging that very thing when this "Mr. Colt" insisted they needed to come with him.

Apparently "Mr. Colt" - and Sarah was relatively certain that had been the man's name for no more than a week and would not be his name next week - had the same affliction of talkativeness as Chuck. Supervillain syndrome, Chuck had called it when they had been watching movies with Devon and Ellie. Gloating. Monologuing. Sarah had encountered it before but with few options available to her now she had never been so thankful for it.

She cut her eyes to the plastic chopsticks in front of her on the table and let Chuck see her do it. One of those in the man's jugular would bring even this mountain of muscle down. Take the head off the snake and hope it caused enough confusion to extend her life until the next move. Upset the small table between them if Chuck followed her lead and got out of the way but she'd be playing things by ear at that point. Possibly use her chair to attack the enemies behind her but it all depended on the angles and the spacing after her first, surprise strike.

Hopefully Chuck would get down and be able to get out in the confusion but any chance of her getting out alive was looking pretty grim. And just moments ago she had such high hopes for this being such a good night.

Sarah had to force back a smile at Chuck's stall-tactic blathering about moo goo gai pan and going Dutch - the unconventional superhero keep-'em-talking corollary to monologuing - and she had seen him make it work before. Why did he have to be so adorable while causing a distraction for her to stab a man in the neck?

She could sense the big man's exasperation and almost laughed at both the comment and the reaction when Chuck actually asked how much bad guys tip. She knew she wouldn't get a better chance.

She grabbed the chopsticks in her fist and swung for Mr. Colt's jugular in one continuous motion only to find herself well and truly fucked when the impossibly big man moved impossibly fast. Impossibly fast for anyone, much less someone of his size.

He had been anticipating her doing something and he caught her stabbing fist and put her in a chokehold in one fluid motion of his own. It was rare for her to meet someone like this. Someone with such a distinct physical advantage over her. Head-to-head, toe-to-toe who knew how his fighting style or styles would match up to hers. Men this size tended to be sluggers with very little technique at all but his speed made him a wild card. As did the obvious fluid technique he applied when countering her attempted strike.

It was even more rare for her but this was a man who - given a choice - she would choose not to fight at all.

Her only hope was that Chuck could continue to distract and irritate until someone in this crew became exasperated with him and they could find something to use to their advantage but Mr. Colt was apparently a tactician as well. And she realized he knew exactly what he was dealing with when he said the one thing guaranteed to shut the clever mouth of the sweet, sweet man she had agreed to go out with tonight…

"Move and she dies."

Chuck froze. Only looking at his wrist out of reflex when Mr. Colt asked what the strange beeping from Chuck's watch was. And she smiled because what Mr. Colt didn't realize was that - even though she was trying to be a normal girl out with a normal guy - when you stepped into their professional world there was a third force to account for.

In their prior professional lives, she was the scalpel and he was the hammer. And he was a hammer of nearly Mr. Colt sized proportions.

"It's a homing device," she said with a wicked grin even as she heard the roar of a 4.6 liter V-8 engine with its throttle wide open - Doppler effect of its approach distorting the sound - and Sarah waited for Chuck to realize what she already knew.

Casey's version of a danger-close artillery strike was coming. Over two tons of heavily modified made-in-America but boring as hell heavy metal rounding the corner and coming at them at 40... 45... 50 miles per hour with a ram hidden in the grill that was going to make mincemeat of the front of the restaurant and anyone stupid enough to not get out of the way.

"Is that a Crown Victoria?" Chuck asked, only slightly slower to realize this was exactly the opening they needed.

Mr. Colt's grip relaxed and she twisted free, screaming "MOVE!" mostly to Chuck but to anyone else smart enough to listen.

In the ensuing chaos of Casey screeching to a halt, managing his speed and gauging his ability to do so against the psychological effect of coming in at high speed, immediately after the full energy of the impact caused enough window shattering dramatics to create the distraction they needed...

Of her partner inexplicably wisecracking like one of the many action movies Chuck had lent to him...

Of a punch to the cheek that nearly knocked Casey - the anvil of their team - unconscious...

Of her somehow getting Chuck gathered up and into the car and Casey somehow falling back into the driver's seat and behind the wheel from the force of the punch...

While screaming to Casey to drive, before she was even fully in the car, she saw it.

Somehow in all the scattered debris she saw the little slip of paper that had helpfully, if unnecessarily, reminded her how to say "Owl" in Chinese.

The little slip of paper fluttered across the ground as the Crown Vic plowed backward faster than advisable before spinning as Casey shifted gears and machine gun fire plunked off its armored rear. Th fortune itself was lost to her but the words on the side opposite the Chinese vocabulary lesson and lucky numbers were clear as day in her mind's eye and burned into her memory:

"Happiness is within your grasp"

.

* * *

To be continued...

* * *

.

A/N2, The Glow: How many of you knew that the dumpling restaurant was named "The Last Dragon"?

I honestly don't know if I should recommend Berry Gordy's film of the same name but it's so hokey that I love it... It's deliberately (and often uncomfortably) "blaxploitation", featuring characters such as the villain, Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, and our hero, "Bruce LeRoy". You can however thank it for the DeBarge song "Rhythm of the Night". Completely unironically speaking. I love that song.

The "fortune cookie without a fortune" bit is from that movie too. And despite the absurdity of the movie (and the nature of the "master" LeRoy is seeking) it is meant to represent the idea that you must find your answers from within.

And I know you all wanted to know what Sarah's cookie said.

.

The Fourth Dimension (or let's not get too scientific about this, okay?):

I generally group Hollywood time travel into three categories...

\- Back to the Future (the time line exists but you CAN go back and screw it up; the sequels go a little sideways),

\- Terminator. Or the initial premise of the original The Terminator (the time line exists BECAUSE of something you have yet to go back and cause; BttF3 adopts this in small ways with the Old West elements but the Terminator sequels also leave the track of the original premise... T2 introduces a paradox of would John Conner have a father if there was no SkyNet? And then T3 makes Judgement Day inevitable rather than avoidable...) and

\- Bill and Ted (anything can happen NOW as long as you remember to go back LATER and make it happen BEFORE: "Gotta remember a trash can...")

Then, of course, there's also Hitchhiker's Zaphod Beeblebrox whose grandfather is actually his grandson (or something) due to a non-specific "incident with a contraceptive and a time machine".

But recently on Agents of SHIELD, Leo Fitz had a very compelling explanation of the "fourth dimension" and the immutability of the time stream which contains the time-traveller. It's less about traveling BACK in time and more about "seeing" the future but being unable to change it because, if you somehow saw it, it IS. Consistent with another adage I heard somewhere (but could not find again) about time travel being a disruption like a "stick in a stream" that causes ripples but a disruption that time flows around and that ultimately does not change the course of the stream. But perhaps it was the immutability of A time stream and there's a FIFTH dimension of infinite alternate universes and time streams with varying courses?

There's also Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" (effectively in the Back to the Future category) and the related 'Butterfly Effect' treatments (although ASoT is often incorrectly credited as the origin of that phrase due to a plot point). And I like the "Fixed Points in Time" of Doctor Who as a story concept which would possibly be 5th dimensional nexuses rather than 4th but... like I said, these are the Hollywood theories not the mathematical ones so let's not get too scientific about this, okay?

I just figure that Chuck, desperate to have the infinite possibilities of his life restored to him, is likely to embrace the Terminator 2 approach as it is rather hopeful. (But, FWIW, ceteris paribus, I'm rolling with Fitz.)

.

MythBusters: Or how many knew that the Mr. Colt punch that leaves the tell-tale imprint on Casey's cheek is based on (or at least parallels) the comic book character "The Phantom", a twenty-generation legacy crime fighter whose ring left a similar but skull-shaped mark?

The Phantom's punch was featured on episode 86 of MythBusters ("Superhero Hour") and was "Busted". Using pig skin stretched over an actual human skull and "punching" it with the superhuman force required to leave an imprint of the ring (as happens here to Casey) would unfortunately also be enough force to crush or shatter the victim's skull.

I actually thought the (failed/busted) attempts at a functional "grappling gun" were more interesting but there you go...


	36. XXXVI: The Beast of America (7:9)

...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: Second of two chapters promised last time (except it became two chapters)

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also in this installment, no ownership of Berry Gordy's _The Last Dragon_, any Marvel comics, Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) in _The Whole Nine Yards_, any songs (or instrumentals) by Sir Elton John, or Kurt Russell's _Soldier_ and _The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_ is asserted or implied.

.

* * *

Part XXXVI: The Beast of America, Part 7

* * *

.

093: Catch Me, I'm Falling

.

* * *

_"Those who are bound by desire see only that which can be held in their hands"_

"Bruce" LeRoy Green, Berry Gordy's _The Last Dragon_

* * *

.

Orange Orange Frozen Yogurt, Burbank, CA; Thursday May 28, 2008 10:45 am

.

"I still can't get over: 'Somebody order drive through?'" a smirking Sarah said mockingly as Casey emerged from the back room of what was supposedly her yogurt shop trying to break the ice after yet another briefing since last night.

"Heh. Yeah, good one, huh?"

"What I mean is I can't believe Chuck's rubbing off on you."

"Shut your mouth" he replied to her, sitting there with one leg over the other, bouncing her leg like she did when she was nervous. He hadn't seen her nervous often which was why it was so easy to recognize.

"Want some ice for that?" Sarah gestured toward his cheek. "It's still swollen," Sarah observed of the mark on Casey's cheek which he had stubbornly left unattended. As if he needed a visible Red Badge to justify his claim that there was a leak that needed to be plugged in their custody chain. As though someone with all the proper security clearances hadn't ambushed Casey with an aerosol poison on his own doorstep.

If Casey hadn't fully tricked out his apartment with a detox shower and a readily accessible adrenaline shot he wouldn't have survived. As it was he was still putting on a brave front for everyone. As if he hadn't puked his guts out twice from the after-effects once early this morning and the first time when they had come in for their first ass-chewing last night.

A lesser man would still be cowering on the floor whereas Casey had cleaned himself up and done the damn job. He was a machine and Sarah was glad he was on their side.

She had been relieved that there hadn't been much questioning about her being out with Chuck beyond her rote "cover maintenance" excuses and none about her being unarmed, assuming instead that she had simply been hopelessly outnumbered.

Beckman and Graham had reserved most of their ire for the loss of the Cipher and projected that blame on Casey until he finally stopped "taking it like a man" and pointed out that the primary fault belonged wherever the breakdown with the courier had occurred.

Their superiors had been chastened enough to give Casey some credit for "securing the secondary resource" - here meaning their only currently viable human Intersect - and then convinced that they needed to evaluate the communication chain for any clues as to how compromised the overall operation might be.

Casey had feelers out all over the world and opted to crash in one of the detention cells last night. He let her pull surveillance of Bartowski from his apartment where she alternated between watching Chuck sleep through the infrared cameras and reviewing possible background matches before dozing off in one of Casey's arm chairs under a military issue blanket.

It both gave her some peace of mind and allowed her to drive in with Chuck, stopping off on the way so she could bring Casey some breakfast options. As repulsive as food often sounded after the effects of such toxins it was often the key to feeling somewhat normal again. She brought plain oatmeal and a greasy breakfast sandwich, both of which Casey inhaled with a smirk from her but no other commentary.

He had been moments from death and yet shook it off to come save her and Chuck. She wouldn't forget that anytime soon.

"Yeah. Sure," an exhausted Casey slumped in the bench seats along the wall of the yogurt shop, a rare acceptance of some sort of assistance though Sarah had no intentions of actually nurse-maiding him.

"Any word from Washington about the Cipher? Colt?" Sarah filled the bag with frozen yogurt - some toxic orange concoction - rather than ice as she asked about his briefings this morning.

Casey had checked in with Beckman again and then some other NSA and less-conventional resources. Sarah had decided it best to remain scarce to avoid revisiting her less than advisable "cover maintenance" while there was known mercenary activity in the area by a group somehow aware of either her or Chuck's movements.

It was another lapse she didn't want examined more closely even though she had been able to determine how they had tracked them and overheard the dinner planning conversation with Morgan which enabled them to secure the restaurant and the civilians inside prior to their arrival.

"The courier was bribed," Casey revealed as Sarah closed the zip-top baggie full of frozen yogurt. "He's been taken care of. Showed up this morning like nothing happened, saying he never got the assignment and thinking he got me. All he knows now - or knew - is that he gambled for a big bag of cash and lost spectacularly. I'm trying to get what I can on the rest of them from a few contacts."

Sarah returned to her seat, handing the bag to Casey as he continued.

"They're scouring the merc networks. No idea on Colt or any of his men. Ahh," he grimaced as he applied the cold pack to the raw wound. "I've been in the ghost business a long time. These guys are very, very good."

"Casey..." Sarah ventured because she had been dwelling on the possibility since last night. Since they had deemed Chuck the "secondary" resource. The possibility she had been blinded to as she focused too much on her inevitable departure and loss of the man in question from her life. Foolishly avoiding the possibility of losing him altogether in a very permanent way. "...I don't have anything to worry about do I? About Chuck? I mean he's safe, right? You would tell me if Beckmann or Graham wanted him..."

"Dead? Mm," Casey grunted. "Don't worry, Sarah. He's safe."

It wasn't a lie. He didn't divulge that he had been carrying a kill order for Charles Bartowski, at least as a contingency, for nearly a year but it wasn't a lie.

It was the same order she had been carrying when they first arrived. Hers had just been rescinded. By Graham or of her own accord he wasn't sure. But it wasn't a lie. Bartowski was as safe as he could be... in the context of Sarah's question.

The cipher was gone. Bartowski remained the sole human Intersect. Therefore, the status quo had been restored.

Uncomfortable with his role in the whole affair and the fact that happenstance had spared him from executing his orders, Casey moved to leave but Sarah called after him.

"Thank you for coming for us," she said without looking up.

Casey turned in disbelief. They didn't do that. Thank each other for doing their jobs. He didn't feel a need to explicitly state that she had proven his earliest assumptions about her wrong and more than earned his respect. And she never felt a need to point out that she had allowed herself to rely on him as he now relied upon her without a second thought.

"Do I wanna know what you two were doing at that restaurant?" Casey deflected.

"Eating," Sarah said with a smirk as she finally made eye contact.

"Do I wanna know?" Casey reiterated. He wasn't blind. Or stupid. He was surprised they held out this long.

"Probably not. Plausible deniability and all. But with the Cipher gone… it won't be a problem."

"Well... it better not. And you're welcome," Casey said and he had never been more pleased to have failed a mission.

He allowed his relief to wash over him that the cipher WAS gone and the prospect of making Bartowski obsolete would wait for another day. It was up to Walker whether she was able to keep it in her pants or wanted to fight the fight of pursuing her obvious attraction she shared with Bartowski. Still he felt the need to test her response.

"Guess it all worked out for the best, huh?"

"Yeah," Sarah sighed regretfully. "Except for not getting Chuck his life back. But it's nice to have someone I can count on covering our backs."

Sarah thought nothing of it as Casey offered a typically indecipherable grunt in response and let the door close behind him.

.

* * *

.

Casey made his exit and trudged across the parking lot, his anger rising with every step. It wasn't just Bartowski he had been prepared to betray, it was Walker too. His partner. He hadn't been fortunate in partners over his career and had not been assigned to many who he would consider good ones. Definitely no one as good as her. No one as deadly as her. No one as crafty…

Did she know about the order? Was she working him? If so, she couldn't blame her. It was to protect the kid. It was interesting that what she said she regretted was that Chuck wouldn't be given some sort of Shangri-La return to ignorance - as though they would ever just ignore the risk he posed with all that intel in his head - rather than regret over whatever had been interrupted with the two of them out on an unsanctioned date last night.

He and Sarah Walker were two of the deadliest people alive and the kid was getting under both their skins. He ignored several customers as he stormed through the sales floor of the Buy More and through the 'Employees Only' doors. The whole situation from the top of the NSA down to the Buy More break room just pissed him off.

Casey saw the handwritten "Interviews in Progress" sign on the door to that break room but heard Bartowski's voice from inside saying, "Okay, here's the thing: We're at the Buy More? And this is not the mafia..."

He rolled his eyes and decided that whatever nonsense was going on inside was definitely not important enough for him to worry about interrupting. Whatever nonsense these idiots had saddled Bartowski with not knowing what he had been through last night.

Casey barged in and Grimes - foolish enough to attempt to interfere with a decision already made and try to stop him - was lucky to be merely shoved face-first into the far wall as Casey made his way to the first aid kit.

So fucking wasted here, he thought as he heard Bartowski making excuses for him. And so fucking wasted if Casey's superiors had their way and disposed of him like he was no more than the rest of the used up trash that worked here. The dregs of society that Bartowski had tried to personally save - Casey knew the strings he had pulled to get most of these petty criminals and hackers jobs here - and who returned the favor by only holding him back and taking advantage of his good nature.

Casey went about acquiring a bandage from the first aid kit ignoring anyone he had to go through to get there and only then noticing Bartowski's agitation as he had transitioned from apologizing for Casey's behavior to frantically ushering everyone else from the room.

"Morgan, now, now, now!" Chuck was barking orders and clapping his hand to emphasize the urgency and demand rapid compliance, actively clearing the room. "Move it, move it, move it! Shut the door."

"What is it?" Casey finally asked with a sneer.

"I know where they are," Chuck said calmly.

"Who?"

"Who?" Chuck returned to his previously agitated state in an instant. "What do you mean, who? Colt! The guy who smashed you in the face last night," Bartowski pantomimed an abbreviated punch has he said it. "Yeah, I flashed on your scar. It's the emblem for their organization. They have a secret hideout downtown. Warehouse 17 on 103rd Street. We'll hop in the Herder..."

God damn it. The kid just couldn't catch a break. He was his own worst enemy. Never knowing when to stand down. When to back down. When to stay in the damn car and let the professionals do their jobs. When to let sleeping dogs lie. He may not be conventionally gung-ho or "brave" or have a prayer of holding up at all under actual torture but, when it came to doing the right thing, Bartowski would never break. And god damn it, that was what Casey loved about the kid.

He wished he could say the same about the people issuing his orders. Even though he understood why some hard decisions had to be made, he didn't have to like it when a good man got caught on the tracks in front of a freight train. It was them that Casey realized that - in a career of being the guy to do the things that guys like him do - he had just never met anyone quite like the kid. Someone who so clearly didn't deserve it where it had been easy to convince himself that the others did.

As Bartowksi continued to write his own death warrant, Casey wanted to scream at the universe but instead assumed his most calm, hostage-negotiation tone. A tone foreign to him that a less agitated Bartowski would have questioned but Casey thought perhaps he could slow-walk this whole thing and at least give Colt and his group of mercs a solid head start…

The world was now officially completely upside down.

"Cool your jets, hotshot. I'll call it in," Casey tried to placate Bartowski.

"What do you mean call it in? There's no time! They could be on the move already."

"Relax. I'm not gonna rush us into a hideout situation until I'm absolutely certain we have the upper hand. We'll get the Cipher. Just might take some time."

"Casey, I can't take this anymore. Do you understand what I'm saying? I can not do this anymore! I almost died twice in the period of one day, all right? And when I'm looking at my life and what my future could be, I see that it doesn't completely suck. Your Intersect, your new Intersect is almost done. And when it is, I'm free, I'm cool, I'm clear, I'm out of here. I have a future and a life that I want to live."

For someone who wanted out so badly, the kid didn't even realize that his first instinct was that they couldn't let these guys get away. Casey had seen him in action enough to know that - although the context of his conscription into service was always at the front of his mind - letting the bad guys win was unacceptable. If it had been the other way around...if letting them go somehow meant Bartowski was free of the Intersect...Casey was fairly certain they would be having a very similar conversation despite it wrecking Bartowski's life. Again.

"Future's a dangerous thing, Chuck," Casey offered cryptically, already knowing which course the kid would take. "Doesn't always work out like you want it to."

"What happened to you? You were this close to being done with me and being a real spy again."

"What? You don't you want me here to catch you when you fall?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I'd rather have you flying jets and blowing things up."

Casey took a breath and realized Bartowski was trying to goad him into doing the right thing. Walker was right about him rubbing off on him. He had always had that gallows humor but the quipping had escalated around Bartowski. Not only did Bartowski's insistence on building Casey's pop culture knowledge have an impact on his smart-ass nature but their give and take - the kid was the quickest witted person he'd ever met - made him want to keep up with Bartowski's mental gymnastics.

He challenged him. In many ways. And he wasn't going to let this go. Bartowski's own self-interests aside, the kid couldn't just let these guys get away. Couldn't do what Casey had just considered allowing to happen. And the civilian had to be the one to remind the soldier that he couldn't just let it happen either, no matter the consequences.

He was one of the good guys with the bad luck combination of knowing too much and not knowing how to back down.

The kid just couldn't catch a break.

It had been nice to think it was all going to work out but Casey had to respect the fact that Bartowski had the integrity that he had once convinced himself was at the root of all the awful things he had done. He was the best of them. And if Casey deserved his place on this team he couldn't just let the bad guys go either.

"Wait here."

.

* * *

.

Downtown Los Angeles; Thursday May 28, 2008 2:30 pm

.

_Happiness was within her grasp._

Not _in_ her grasp. Like the way Chuck was currently in the grasp of the imposing Mr. Colt, dangling upside down off the side of the building by his ankles.

Sarah could barely tell Chuck was there, supported only by Colt's massive arms with one of Chuck's ankles in each hand in front of him. Colt was talking to the man dangling off the side of the building, Chuck stalling again to give her a chance to get in position

No, Chuck - or rather her chance for happiness - was not _in_ her grasp.

He - or rather that opportunity - was _within_ her grasp. Not yet hers but within her power to attain.

Or once was because like so many things, that opportunity was a fleeting thing.

Because fearing the worst was about to happen she called out for Mr. Colt to "Freeze!" and a man the size of a mountain looked back at her over his shoulder, then back down to Chuck with a shake of his head telling her even from behind that he had simply become tired of their cat and mouse games.

In an instant, all their opportunities were gone. The massive man simply opened his clenched hands - relinquished his grasp - and Sarah's world stopped turning.

Chuck Bartowski's flailing limbs slipped out of sight beyond the building's edge and for Sarah Walker everything slowed down. And turned grey.

There was a sudden high pitched wail that rattled her bones. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. A concussion grenade perhaps because, for the first time in her life, she froze. She literally froze. Whatever it was, she felt sick to her stomach and slightly dizzy. The unflappable Enforcer was too disoriented to shoot straight.

And what would that accomplish now anyway?

"Your boyfriend's dead now, baby. What you gonna do?"

The taunt barely registered. She had already decided that she didn't want to kill the man she had previously decided it would be unwise to fight. She wanted to hurt him until he begged for her to kill him. Before she could really assess exactly how to do that, he was on her. Within her grasp. And her within his. The indecisiveness of her rage and whatever had disoriented her allowed him to knock her pistol from her grasp.

_That_ she had been able to hold on to. To embrace that useless hunk of metal or one like it for a decade. But what she really wanted was gone and beyond recovering.

Breath heaving for no apparent reason, it hadn't been until Mr. Colt knocked her pistol from her hands that she realized what that bone rattling, sickening sound had been.

It was her - screaming - as the dim but persistent hope of eventual happiness was extinguished.

Her weapon being knocked from her grasp stirred her back into action. Sarah didn't even realize what she was doing until she was on him. Foolishly inside the reach of a man she had already assessed as someone she did not want to fight.

But rather than making a strategic retreat, left with only the ashes of potential happiness sifting through her fingers, Sarah Walker directed her formidable skills to the impossible task of destroying the immovable object in front of her.

She dodged his first strike and countered with an axe kick to the back of his neck. It would have incapacitated or even killed a lesser opponent but barely staggered the enormous Mr. Colt. He threw the hardest punches he could thinking the sheer force would end this fight quickly. She countered those next two punches by sheer luck, roundhouses aimed at her torso that simply ran into all the force she could muster in her own attempted strikes like two locomotives on the same track.

The ferocity of her elbow strike at his sternum caused him to simply shove her backward when he absorbed it. He recovered to similarly absorb her follow up front kick and catch her foot only to barely duck away from her enzuigiri, catching the leaping, spinning kick on his jaw rather than the back of the neck where this time she fully intended to separate his skull from his spine.

Another exchange of blows found her inside his reach with hands nearly catching her at the waist where God knows how much organ damage he could have done with just the tips of his fingers digging in. Luckily it left him open to a double ear slap with her cupped hands that just missed the mark.

He had started to pull her in and close the distance so the double strike missed toward the back of his head causing her cupped hands to miss landing exactly on the ears where she could have ruptured one or both ear drums. She swung her fist for the side of the head again and he shot his massive arm up to both block the strike with the mass of his lat muscles and, as her hand slipped down his side from the force and weakened by her ignoring any notion of conserving her strength, he trapped her arm against his side and pulled her in.

This is the physical advantage he had been trying to establish from the beginning and when he pulled her forward to stumble into him his right hand found her throat and lifted her skyward without hesitation or even any apparent strain. He held her aloft by her windpipe easily but he wasn't the only one who could grapple.

She gripped his arm and pushed with all her might to lift herself up and relieve some of the pressure on her throat before she righted herself and swung her leg over to attempt an arm bar. If she locked it in perfectly she could use her full body weight and strength of her back against just the strength of his bicep. But given how easily he had lifted her any delay in destroying his elbow joint could mean giving him the opportunity to smash her head against the rooftop.

Mid-swing she second guessed her remaining strength against his - reconsidered her ability to effectively apply an arm bar even with the full strength of her already weakening body pitted against just that of his massive bicep - and connected her toe with his temple instead of going for the arm.

At least she could get her breath back but now he was on her, taking her leg out and then absorbing her next wild, oxygen deprived punch with the same trap move against the side of his body. Then her second arm was trapped in much the same way and he pulled her in to exactly where she didn't want to be. The very reason she had assessed him as a 'no-go' target last night when she had been capable of rational thought.

The act of keeping her arms pinned prevented him from wrapping her up in the full bear hug, not wanting to potentially let her squirm an arm free and go for an ear or an eye. But it was enough.

And he simply squeezed until they both felt something pop.

Mr. Colt laughed and let her limp body fall and, lying there, she knew she was done. But also realized that what had popped was one of the plates in her tactical armor. And that Colt was hovering over her. She had gone limp at the sound in a desperate ruse to fool him into releasing her and giving up his physical advantage.

She didn't have much left in the tank and considered making a break for it. But then the vision of what he had done to Chuck was still burned onto the back of her closed eyelids. And she gathered her breath for one more shoot to kill.

The best way to chop down a big man but having to leverage her jujitsu skills to kick from her back. A split kick to both knees, another shot to an ankle, and when he doubled over from that a kick to the head. It didn't matter that she couldn't quite get to her feet.

If she could draw him in, get him to go for her throat while she was on her back maybe she could bring her legs up for a triangle choke. He could still bash her head in but she could choke him to death or conceivably break his neck. Maybe she could kill him before his immense hand completely crushed her windpipe or snapped her neck. She no longer held any illusions of winning this fight outright or even of leaving this rooftop alive but that didn't mean she was going to let Mr. Colt survive their encounter either.

"Okay, enough with the foreplay. Step away from the blonde."

Sarah heard Casey's voice behind her opponent. The fight had all transpired in a matter of moments as Casey climbed the fire escape and - despite the fact that he saved her from mutual destruction against Mr. Colt - she couldn't help but be disappointed that Casey interrupted.

But then her next thought was that now she could still kill him. Kill him for killing Chuck. If she could just get her battered body to respond. But then a dozen guns were trained on the two of them and something else that had never happened to her occurred. She felt all the fight in her drain from her body.

She had failed him in every possible way. The wind whipped the hairs that had escaped her ponytail around her face and she couldn't bring herself to get up from her knees as Colt's men closed in for the kill.

Until she heard a door open behind her and her heart leapt back to life at her nerd calling out "Excuse me..."

.

* * *

.

Sarah could barely drag herself to her feet, seeing Chu- Agent Carmichael standing there. Using the identity that Casey had dismissed as "made up" but directing their tactical team as though born to it. They had only described Chuck to the team as "friendly on site" and given a general description but apparently he had acted with enough false authority to direct their tactical team to surround the mercenary team that had surrounded her and Casey.

Not just doing the job that wasn't his to do but reveling in it. Asking Colt if he found _his_ team imposing. Throwing the giant's words back at him. An outsider would have thought he was mocking them with the awkward way he directed Colt's team to abandon their weapons but Sarah just thought he was doing an admirable job of making things up as he went along.

He had no idea what he was doing. But that didn't stop him from coming for her. And Casey, of course. It was a combination of bravado and confidence that he hadn't quite embraced yet but she had seen in him all along. Just because he wasn't trained to filter his natural fear response didn't mean he wasn't capable of pulling off...whatever he had done that had Mr. Colt actually chuckling behind her.

She heard Colt's admiration and acceptance of defeat as Casey secured him "Your boss? Carmichael..." and Sarah could practically hear Casey shaking his head in disbelief as he reacted but was it really such an impossible idea? "...He's good."

Mr. Colt - leader of his own team - didn't seem to think it was such an impossible idea and Sarah could now focus on the fact that Chuck was alive and well and somehow standing with his arms crossed staring down the imposing man she had just fought a losing battle against. With her breath still heaving from the fight and her hair whipping around her face she approached "Agent Carmichael".

"Don't worry, I'm fine," he said in reaction to the disbelief that must have been evident on her face with his hands briefly held up apologetically.

Although he was confirmed alive and well with her own unbelieving eyes the adrenaline was still coursing through her body. She had gone from attempting to avenge him to being saved by him in a matter of moments and now her thoughts turned to whether they had managed to free him of the burden of the Intersect. And all the limitations that came with it. Because she just as suddenly had very specific plans for the two of them.

"Do you have the cipher? Please tell me you have it," she asked.

"Of course I have it. It's me," he said as he held up the device in question.

Only then did she feel actual relief. Not at achieving their mission but at getting Chuck's ticket to freedom back. And at his devil-may-care smile. And the goofy channelling of Han Solo for the second time in the past few days that confirmed to her that this was her Chuck in front of her and not his alter ego, Charles Carmichael who - made up or not - existed somewhere inside Chuck Bartowski.

As Casey plucked the Cipher from Chuck's hand and their team set to the task of securing the prisoners and Sarah was pleased to see that Mr. Colt was at least limping. She considered kicking him in the knee as he passed but heard the mercenary's last words on the topic, directed at her nerd as Casey escorted the man off the rooftop, "Huevos grandes, amigo." She couldn't agree more and wanted to get Chuck off the roof to somewhere where they could speak freely so that she could say so.

"Let's get you checked out," she said as she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him toward the stairs. They rode the elevator down the rest of the way along with half the tactical team and their prisoners. After a single deep breath and exhale Chuck was lounging casually in the corner, seemingly without a care in the world.

Sarah was deliberately ignoring the sideways glances at the two of them from the men - friend and foe alike - who knew she just fought the massive leader of the mercenaries they had taken into custody one-on-one and was still standing, who had witnessed the exchange between her and Agent Carmichael before they left the roof hand-in-hand, and who now marveled at both Carmichael's nonchalance over the whole affair and the warrior woman's fierce stance as she stood between the man in the corner and _anyone_ who would dare threaten him.

The men stood aside as she held "Agent Carmichael" by the hand and briskly escorted him out of the building.

"Where are we go-" Chuck began as Sarah tugged his arm and pulled him past the medical personnel who had been dispatched then up the alley next to the building. It wasn't the most desirable spot but whatever was currently keeping her heart rate up and her skin on fire - whether residual adrenaline or something else - wouldn't allow her to wait a moment longer.

Sarah pulled Chuck out of sight behind a dumpster and spun him around, lightly backing him up against the brick wall where she reached up and cradled both sides of his face. She looked into those warm eyes and he grinned but humored her without speaking until she convinced herself that he was here in front of her. Whole and unharmed and... Perfect.

For the second time her body reacted without her permission. Not freezing this time but leaping into the inadvisable. She moved her hands behind his neck, closed her eyes, and pulled him down to crash his lips into hers with a searing kiss.

It took a moment for a shocked Chuck to return the kiss but then he recovered and kissed her back passionately. He pulled her close as her tongue playfully darted between his lips. He smiled against her lips as he joined in as she realized that she couldn't get close enough to him for her satisfaction or even peace of mind. Chuck pulled her tighter against him to kiss her harder and deeper but froze when he hugged her close and a soft moan turned into a slight grunt of pain.

Chuck pulled back to see her reluctantly open her eyes. Then he reached up to lightly stroke her still wildly disheveled hair back to frame her face with a gentle stroke of each middle finger from her temples down to her ears. Then he gently cupped her face, much as she had done.

"Hey," she said. Finally breaking the silent stare between them.

"Hey yourself. You actually fought that guy?" Chuck asked, knowing better than to ask if she was okay. He would just treat her gently until he could assess for himself.

"Yeeeah," Sarah replied sheepishly, knowing Chuck wouldn't see it as a tactical misstep but also not even willing to revisit the intense emotions that had led to her doing such a foolish thing.

"God, you're amazing," he said in open wonder at her instead, making her feel the way no one had ever made her feel. The way only he could.

"You're really OK?" Sarah asked, afraid that this was all some cruel joke or comatose dream having actually lost the fight and only dreaming from a hospital bed that he had somehow been restored to her.

"Yeah," Chuck said, then grinning at the kiss and her arms still lightly looped around his waist. "Better than OK now."

She smacked his chest and almost blushed at her own impetuousness. Then the persistent mental image of his flailing body dropping out of sight off the side of the building caused her eyes to water and she choked out her equally persistent disbelief that she had another chance to seize her happiness, "How?"

"I'll tell you the whole story later if you promise not to be mad," the corner of Sarah's mouth quirked upward at that. She was pretty sure it would make her mad but she was too happy to let it show right now. "But I tricked them...slipped away from them. You won't believe how Morgan helped without knowing he was helping. But Colt caught me on the roof and then...Casey. He caught me. Like, literally. My arm feels like it's been half pulled off but-"

Sarah shut him up with another searing kiss that Chuck was much faster to respond to but that ended just as quickly.

"Let's get out of here," she said with a sexy almost growling rumble in her voice that caused Chuck's eyes to widen as much as his smile. His reaction shook her to her senses, "I mean... I have to finish securing the scene. And that's a lot of agents to debrief in there. But... later?"

"A do-over?" Chuck asked with a grin.

"Yeah. A do-over. Definitely," Sarah smiled back.

"Our third first date," Chuck mused before asking "Where would you like to go?"

"I don't want to take any chances," she half laughed before looking up at him that same seductive way and playing with the hair at the back of his neck the way she had done both at the restaurant last night. Looking up through her eyelashes with a slight huskiness in her voice, "Can we just stay in?"

"I... Uhh..." Chuck stammered as she raised her eyebrows to hammer home what she was suggesting. "Absolutely. Can I cook dinner for you? Awesome and Ellie are going out to some Mongolian place before pulling doubles. Morgan's even got some marathon gaming lined up..."

"Perfect," Sarah purred at the idea of no interruptions. She didn't know where she'd be tomorrow but she knew where she wanted to be tonight.

"So... My place? I have to pick up some stuff so... Nine-ish?" Chuck asked and Sarah nodded.

"Take the Herder. Get yourself punched out and home safely. And I'll see you then... Agent Carmichael," Sarah instructed with a teasing tone while straightening Chuck's shirt before deliberately swaying her hips as she walked back to finish up with the the prisoners and debrief the tactical team so she could get ready for her third first date.

Happiness - at least some fleeting version of it - was within her grasp.

It was just up to her to seize it.

.

* * *

.

094: Funeral for a Friend

.

Major John Casey's Temporary Residence, Echo Park, CA; Thursday May 28, 2008 8:45 pm

.

"Ahem! Major Casey…" came the General's voice from the video link, waiting in an open status for a call he hoped wouldn't come but startling Casey into excessively and irreparably snipping a branch from a bonsai tree when it did.

"Hope I'm not interrupting," the General said with slight amusement in her voice. She had never understood what Casey found so soothing about the care and maintenance of the tiny trees given how often he had to abandon them.

Casey had a similar thought as he contemplated the ruined bonsai, soon to be abandoned if this call was about what he expected it to be.

"The new Intersect ready?" he asked curtly.

"We're minutes away," the General replied with a seriousness to her tone that signaled to Casey that all of the ramifications he expected of that event were still in play. Still, he wanted confirmation.

"Which means..."

"Your order remains the same," Beckman said glancing away and then back to the camera. "Chuck Bartowski is to be eliminated."

Casey let out a sigh as the last hope for any reprieve was removed.

"What was that, Casey?"

"Nothing, General. It's just..." General Beckman reached to sign off their video conference and Casey found that he couldn't silently accept this order without offering an alternative. "Chuck's served his country with honor. Maybe he even has potential as an analyst for the organization?"

"I unders-" the General began but was interrupted by Director Graham, who had not announced his presence until now.

"Let me, General. Major Casey, can you extract these secrets from Mr. Bartowski's head? Can you guarantee him safety from kidnapping? From torture?"

So that's what they were going to go with? By the book? Extreme risk outweighs any other humanitarian or even human concerns?

The proverbial man who knew too much to be allowed to live?

The biggest problem from Major John Casey's point of view was that, despite his feelings on the matter, everything he had seen in nearly two decades as a spy - until meeting Charles Irving Bartowski, of course - screamed to him that they were right.

"No," a dejected Casey admitted honestly. He couldn't guarantee any such thing. Even Bartowski had realized those situations were possibilities and discussed it with him. Made him promise.

A fact he saw no point in reminding General Beckman of with Director Graham present and more than willing to simply replace Casey in the execution of this order.

"Then it's clear," Graham declared when it was really anything but. "Chuck Bartowski has served his country with honor. Now he'll die with honor to protect it."

In the nation's capital, Director Graham impatiently closed the video conference. He had an army to build and Chuck Bartowski had no place in it. In California, Major John Casey steepled his fingers in front of him and considered the value of the man he was ordered to kill.

The young man who had braved more dangers than he would ever have expected, even having seen him do it that very first night. Repeating the feat on many missions since. A man who might not be suited for being an agent - a role that would require things of him like the orders given to Casey himself tonight - but certainly as an analyst. Or more. A man who might be better suited to be _giving_ the orders to agents than the two people who had issued his own orders tonight.

Casey looked up when the video link sprang back to life, Beckman reopening the conference with her gaze still on the door that must have just closed behind the Director of the CIA. A man completely the opposite of Chuck Bartowski; someone they were now both convinced was one of the most evil men they had ever known. The worst possible means to an end in their profession.

"Major Casey... John. I wish we could pursue the analyst option. That young man _has_ served his country with honor. You were right about him when you told me that. Tonight and before. It's simply out of my hands unless we completely break open the security of this operation and escalate it up the chain. We don't know enough about how deep Fulcrum is embedded to risk that. However, the option still stands for you to recuse yourself. Director Graham informed me that he has recalled Agent Walker and everyone's guard is down. Pack up. Get out. Let his cleaners handle it. I'll make sure _our_ cleaners create a reasonable story for his sister. You've served your country with honor too. This isn't something you should be asked to do."

Casey looked over at the hastily repaired picture of Ronald Reagan that had housed his emergency adrenaline syringe. He knew the man had flaws, but as President he also represented an ideal. Had achieved great things for some shaky semblance of peace to effectively end the Cold War.

Casey was a Marine. Part of a brotherhood that you never leave. Strived to personify that ideal himself. Then he was given an opportunity to make even more of a difference.

Or so he told himself.

He had compromised those ideals. A little bit at first. Then a lot. Then he had let his grief over Ilsa's death send him down the path of a cold-blooded killer. And found, to his current dismay, that he was better at that than he had been at anything before. He was the man you sent when you wanted someone dead. The very type of man - the very _thing_ \- the unrepentant, unfeeling instrument of war that Beckman now suggested be sent in his place.

Why shouldn't he be asked to do it? Worse, who _should_ be asked to do it? Graham's cleaners? He wanted to laugh at that. The idea of such people being worthy of such a task. Himself included. He wasn't worthy of killing such a man.

But definitely not those homicidal puppets of Graham's with no idea of the hardships endured or any respect for the man who had lost everything just because a former friend considered him the best option to trust with all the secrets of a nation. No more thought than Larkin had given him. A former friend who gave no consideration to the sacrifices Bartowski would have to make for that decision. No consideration to the inevitable outcome facing them right now.

Even with all he had done since, John Casey - the man he had reinvented himself as in order to make that difference in the world - was first and foremost, a soldier. And he had prided himself on doing his duty but also knew there were times when an order should not be obeyed. He would have been proud to have had a man like Bartowski counted among his soldiers - especially, he thought with a smirk, if he had the authority to train him as he saw fit.

He had even once described Bartowski to the General as an unconventional soldier. His only proof - and the only thing he needed to know about the man - was his professional assessment that Bartowski unfailingly chose to do the right thing.

Marines always said that there was no such thing as a former Marine. But was that still true if you betrayed the code of honor he was being asked to betray tonight? If he betrayed one of his own?

Walker had said Chuck was rubbing off on him and she was right. The damn geeky computer that wore tennis shoes. The one who called him - or at least seemed to consider him - a friend and pleaded with him earlier today to help him exit this world of theirs. The one who once foresaw this outcome months ago and considered this type of exit if not this exact scenario. The one who made him promise to do it cleanly.

_The future's a dangerous thing, Chuck._

His exit wasn't going to be the one that any of them would have preferred… but he'd be damned if he let one of Graham's thrill-kill ghouls make a mess of it. And Bartowski was a marked man.

Faced with the impossible conundrum of reconciling what a soldier should _be_ and what a soldier sometimes has to _do_, Casey tried to honor his foolishly naive vision of the brotherhood to which he was no longer sure he belonged. Did it really matter _who_ killed Charles Bartowski?

Major John Casey decided that if he had any respect for the man Bartowski had proven himself to be or the promise he had once made to him - and given that his friend had been marked for death regardless of his choice - that it absolutely mattered. And saw only one imperfect choice available to him.

He sighed and finally separated his bridged fingers, surprised that General Beckman - watching more emotion pass over John Casey's face in those few moments than she had seen in the entire time she had known him - had patiently waited this long for his response.

Casey always waited for the General to dismiss him. He owed her his life. And his obedience. And, until tonight, he had never questioned her judgment. Simply deactivating the comm link from his end was all the statement he was willing to make about the lack of respect he had for Beckman not challenging Graham's position more vigorously.

But before he did so he subtly reiterated what he thought of the young man by calling him something he had called Bartowski before. Unconventional to be sure... but then it would take an unconventional man to befriend the unrepentant executioner of the U.S. Government.

It didn't even surprise him that his only words to the General took the form of those from a movie Bartowski had lent to him.

One that depicted exactly what he was. Both versions. The good and the bad. What he once was and what he could now see of himself and his life since leaving actual service and embarking on a life in the shadows. See through the patriotic bullshit that he had been hiding behind for years to see the version he had become. Something less that the conventional version. The robotic kind that only did as it was told.

The version that obeyed orders. That did his duty.

Even if that duty was to kill his better brother for simply knowing too much.

He wanted to be better than that. But since the kid deserved better than the alternative, he also knew he was the only man for the job.

He'd made a promise.

He reached for the switch to disconnect their feed and go dark until the deed was done. 'Just like flipping a switch' he had once described it to Bartowski. And he had one last comment for the General before he flipped this switch with a remarkably similar contraction of the muscles of the same finger he would use to do the same to his friend.

For once, Casey saw the appeal of Bartowski so often expressing himself in pop culture references as he left the General with the dystopian sci-fi action movie distillation of all of his fractured thoughts and unsparing self-criticisms on the matter:

"Soldiers deserve soldiers, ma'am."

.

* * *

END OF LINE

* * *

.

A/N2: The last line (substituting "ma'am" for "sir") are four of the only 104 words spoken by Kurt Russell throughout the entirety of the movie "Soldier"; Part of the Kurt Russell collection Chuck lent to Casey in Chapter 77 (in Part XXV) after the promise made in Chapter 55 (in Part XIX)

.

Striking Distance: I just deleted an overly lengthy dissertation on a Marvel comics "X-books" crossover event from 1993 called "Fatal Attractions" (and the resultant "Onslaught" and "Heroes Reborn" story arcs three years later) but the question at hand is: How did an armed Sarah Walker possibly allow Mr. Colt to get close enough to disarm her?

I didn't dig my copies out from storage (so the reference is a 23 year old recollection) but the notion of a bad ass character unable to function and hearing a deafening noise they only vaguely associated with their paralysis only to find it is their own screaming is borrowed from Part 5 (Wolverine #75; "Nightmares Persist").

Wolverine #75 is known for the (now well-known and accepted) revelation that Wolvie's claws are not an addition or side-effect of the Weapon-X program as previously theorized when, near the end of the book, he unsheathes his now bone claws. Wolverine's healing factor was overloaded from the events of the previous issue and, despite Professor X's best efforts to hold his mind together against the shock and trauma of Magneto ripping the adamantium from his skeleton and out through his skin, he is embracing his imminent death... until he hears Jean Grey call for help.

But in the beginning of the book, as they are escaping Magneto's mutant haven/fortress of Avalon and trying to save his life, Wolverine is quite annoyed by an incessant high-pitched sound that he initially cannot quite identify...

Oh, in case you didn't get this half-assed analogy, in many ways beyond this little Easter egg: Chuck is Jean, Sarah is Wolverine.

.

The Order: I know many have very legitimate objections to the primary premise of this episode (well, secondary to the event that makes the episode title eponymous). That's why I've laid so much ground work on Graham's Machiavellian machinations.

It does take some characterization gymnastics to not make him completely reprehensible for it but don't get too far ahead of yourselves and start judging Casey too harshly... The episode isn't over yet.

And don't judge Beckman too harshly... The STORY isn't over yet. Wink, wink, hint, hint, I may not plan thoroughly - gotta leave some room for the story to breathe - but I do plan WAY ahead! Also, don't assume that your friendly neighborhood narrator has forgotten certain things previously written or didn't include them in that haphazard planning.

However, the topic of the kill order (along with the red test) is, understandably, a hot topic among Chuck fans. Both are heinous concepts and yet, although they should not be accepted as nifty in any way, neither should they be discarded as "ridiculous" because they are rooted in very real human behaviors, fear-driven decision making and antisocial psychology.

Some view the kill order as both illegal and immoral. If you are one of those idealistic fools... Good! You should be. Even for the "right" reasons, such things are tyrannical in their logic.

The unfortunate truth is that from a purely Machiavellian point of view - e.g. tossing ALL morality out the window - it absolutely makes sense... It's just eeeeeevil. But you should also be aware of another unfortunate truth. Tyranny works. Or rather, tyranny works when it is allowed.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (JFK likely via / adapted from Edmund Blake)

As for whether Casey has rationalized it enough to himself to do it? Stay tuned...


	37. XXXVII: The Beast of America (8:9)

...as unseen events conspire around them and their cover relationship seems to be coming to its inevitable end, Chuck and Sarah each contemplate what they want most...

Canon Reference: End of Episode 201 ("First Date")

Contents: Two chapters; a short one (2K), then one around 5K (then another 5K one to follow in a separate installment)

A/N: FINALLY, the end of this episode... And approaching the end of "Book One". Although split into one more installment after this (this damn Doc Manager, grrrr) and expect an additional collection of epilogues (yes, plural) to round it out.

Disclaimers / Easter Eggs - for this installment and next: The author has made no profit or derived any other material benefit from this work. No ownership of CHUCK or _Tron_ is asserted or implied. Also in these installments, no ownership of _The Godfather_, _Die Hard_, _The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_, _The Whole Nine Yards_, _Sin City_, _The Green Mile_, _The Chronicles of Riddick_ or any songs by Megadeth, AC/DC, or Iron Maiden is asserted or implied.

Like the prior use of the Kurt Russell collection (and there is another passing reference to _The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes_), there are several references herein from movies featuring the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan (the very imposing Mr. Colt) though not necessarily lines spoken by his character. _The Whole Nine Yards_ (revisited), _Sin City_ (extensively), and _The Green Mile_ (a blink-and-you'll-miss-it). I wish I could have wedged an _Armageddon_ one in there...

.

* * *

Part XXXVII: The Beast of America, Part 8

* * *

.

095: Elegance in the Execution

.

* * *

.

"You take a mortal man...

And put him in control...

Watch him become a god..."

.

Megadeth, Symphony of Destruction

.

* * *

.

Office of the Director of the CIA, Washington, D.C.., Thursday May 28, 2008, 10:35 pm ET

.

Director Graham returned briefly to his office after confirming that John Casey would execute his orders and lying to both Casey and Beckman about Agent Walker being recalled. He tidied his desk before opening his desk drawer to reflect on the long road to obtaining this kind of power.

He stacked the remaining Omaha playing cards - less than half of the original deck - on their edge. He flipped through them until her found the King of Spades, tearing the card in half and throwing it into the pile next to his shredder before rapping the remaining deck sharply against the surface of his desk. He reordered them until the Joker card with the CB crossed out in one corner and the SW in the opposite corner showed on top. He then moved to place those remaining nineteen cards back in their weathered, original box.

He then glanced at the other stack of cards. A prototype "kill switch" of sorts developed by the Intersect research team in case any Intersect Agents reacted badly and needed to be subdued. Much larger than playing cards and metallic in appearance. Ornate holograms etched into them. Once Walker, Larkin and the others were recalled, their already-existing base Intersects could be manipulated with the cards. With an additional upload of the new Intersect they would be completely within his control but this fail safe could reset any Agent if they became too aware of what had been done to them.

The time-loss associated with each card varied with the individual but they were designed in graduated increments. The base unit card intended to suppress one month of memories with results varying, theoretically depending upon how hard the subject fought against it. Whatever the result, the next holocard doubled the base unit of memory suppression. The next, five times and so forth.

Just the largest increment should be enough to squarely put Walker and Larkin back on track as the spy couple they were before all this nonsense with Bartowski. Graham would then be able to sell any story about Larkin's old friend... and a lowly retail electronics-store worker. A man Walker would have never met.

Graham left the two very unconventional decks of cards in his desk drawer and headed toward the rooftop helipad. Everything was falling into place. Ever since he had the obnoxious Orion removed from the project for demanding access to old files best left alone, Graham had thought he was in control.

Then for the past year he had been trying to regain that control after what he believed to be Larkin's first betrayal, Larkin's story being he stole the Intersect to keep it out of Fulcrum's hands. Only to later find it was a second betrayal in which all of the players were complicit.

But now he had everyone right where he wanted them. Lined up like John Casey's infamous over 1,000-yard, triple-kill sniper shot from three years ago. It was perfectly planned. As elegant an upheaval as the baptism scene from The Godfather.

Soon enough he would have Intersect agents of varying capabilities and purposes placed strategically abroad and within his own government. While the politicians continued to flounder, he would strike; strategically scoring victories in the wars against their enemies and digging out just the right leverage against so-called friends.

Various power plays over the years had not quite given him the political traction he needed but now he could easily fight on many fronts to build the political capital he desired. Not for next election cycle, the incumbent had that locked up and he wouldn't waste his opportunity on such a close race. But if he stacked up wins like he knew he could, well, a lot can change in four years and who could really stand in his way?

With Beckman's foolish ambition, he had broken her. Never mind the fact that he had no intention of supporting her candidacy for DNI. She had accepted his proposal to remove the human evidence of the current Intersect in exchange for his support when, in truth, he fully expected her to be removed from her NSA post. Because he would be duty-bound to reveal who ordered the death of the first successful Intersect host.

Beckman's own Wild Card, John Casey - the man who had once disrupted Graham's plans for controlling portions of South America and whom Graham had once thought was taken care of accordingly - was the only one Graham had no leverage over and therefore the only one Graham regarded as likely to implicate anyone or stand in his way in any way.

That was why it had to be tonight. Before anyone else got involved.

The already previously disgraced John Casey left holding the bag. And, when Casey and Beckman foolishly believed that Walker had already been recalled, Walker finding John Casey standing over the corpse of the man Graham had come to believe had somehow become her lover over the course of the past ten months. An enraged Sarah Walker would ensure John Casey never disrupted his plans again.

That would be Walker's punishment for her hand in things. To see first hand what deceiving him brought down upon her. But beyond that, like Larkin once he was recalled and uploaded with the new Intersect, Graham was willing to let her off with "time served". The residual suppressed emotion would help ensure Walker was never foolish enough to fall in love again.

But he wasn't without mercy. Especially if it meant getting his Enforcer back into the fold. Any ghosts of actual memories would not be a part of her conscious thoughts.

Like Larkin, she wouldn't remember a thing.

.

* * *

.

The White Room, Classified Location, Northern Virginia, Thursday May 28, 2008, 11:05 pm ET

.

CIA Director Langston Graham oversaw the installation of the Cipher. His version of it. His contribution to both Project Omaha and the Intersect program, originally intended as an intelligence comparison machine. Why limit himself to that when the human mind was capable of so much more?

Graham's directives had turned the "brain" of the Intersect into a device capable of scrambling the brains of its recipients in the most amazing ways. Gifting them with impressive physical gifts or bending their morals to the remorseless use of such skills. All with greater control than the original Omaha test subjects, many of whom had succumbed to psychotic episodes and even a few who had disappeared, Graham assuming they had defected.

Graham smiled as the initial group of soon-to-be Intersect agents robotically paraded into the room and dutifully took their places in preparation for uploading the rebuilt and improved Intersect into their minds. They were a part of his original vision for the Intersect. All morally questionable or worse, most were killers for petty reasons. Borderline or undiagnosed sociopaths extracted from the Federal penal system for his offer of a "second chance".

They were heavily drugged to ease, and improve their chances of surviving, the upload process. The scientists trusted with any degree of "assembly-level" knowledge of the Intersect were supervising the process and cared more for the potential scientific achievement than the men who had just entered the room. They optimistically assured the Director of at least 30% survival but hoped for as high as 85%. Ordinarily, an unacceptably wide range with even the best case considered unacceptable by anyone with half a conscience.

Graham would be satisfied with either or anything in between.

Once they perfected the upload process on recruits of this low caliber and easy replenishment, he could branch out to administrative staff of key congressional leaders, maybe even some of those prominently placed people directly if it eventually went smoothly enough. But first, he would finally have his army.

Ideally he could make any number of super agents lacking the empathy to question his directives from men and women with little capacity for empathy who society had even less use for otherwise. Failing that, he would simply use the alternate version of this bastardization of the Intersect to override such empathy in the more gifted candidates already recruited.

It was just a shame that a few of his best face card agents weren't present, the ones for whom this Intersect was designed. Walker, his Wild Card. Larkin, the Jack of Hearts. His Kings of Clubs and Spades. One on another snipe hunt for his wife's killer. The other finally rescued from months of captivity but never to be the same again.

In Larkin's case, the early Intersect had only permitted the now-Director to amplify the more unsavory aspects of Larkin's character. He had been such an idealist once. Then the first Cipher program had allowed him to tweak the personalities of his agents turning Larkin into the predictable narcissist he now was. Once Larkin used his knowledge of Walker's conditioning against her, Graham would always have something to hold over him and this lesser Larkin would never be brave enough to admit that manipulation to Walker once their partnership was restored.

Not to mention his Wild Card, Sarah Walker. Sweet, deadly, Sarah. Agent Zero. The template for Project Omaha and for the version of the Intersect about to be uploaded to these agents. He would like to keep her in his ranks if only for sentimental reasons. His nightmare from a daydream. He had people nearly as lethal but none who could open doors with just a suggestive glance or a flirty smile and then slip away like a ghost after her objectives had been achieved like she could.

None of this would have been possible without her God-given talents. The second Cipher program now incorporated into this latest Intersect, making her skills transferable to anyone he deemed suitable for his purposes. She had clearly been slipping. Somehow charmed by the man Larkin had deemed a suitable recipient for the Intersect.

From what he now knew about the Glass Castle incident, Larkin had known that Bartowski was an ideal Intersect candidate all along. His Agent had hidden that fact from him when the program could have been ready years ago if they had Bartowski's brain to study. That brain could have pushed the program forward so much faster.

He had no more use for the man himself than he did now that his project was complete. His brain tissue was another matter entirely. Graham smirked at the thought that even that was unnecessary now.

Bartowski's brain matter was free to be splattered all over a wall somewhere - and possibly already was - by Beckman's lapdog. The man who had escaped his wrath once after wrecking one of his carefully orchestrated plans to stockpile political capital would do his duty. Beckman would take the blame and Casey would get to finally see why Sarah Walker was his once and future enforcer.

As he bent over the antiquated computer terminal - modeled after the original user interface for the original Intersect - to enter his credentials, Langston Graham smiled wickedly at the dominoes about to fall...

.

* * *

.

096: Revelations

.

* * *

.

"Rejoice then O Heaven, and ye who dwell therein.

But woe to you, O Earth and Sea

For the Devil sends the Beast with wrath

Because he knows the time is short..."

.

Revelations 12:12

.

* * *

.

Bartowski / Woodcomb / Bartowski Residence, Echo Park, CA; Thursday May 28, 2008, 8:05 pm PT

.

This was different than any infiltration and assassination John Casey had ever executed.

It was _technically_ an illegal order – the murder of a US citizen on US soil – but those types of technicalities had never stopped him before. And both Beckman and Graham knew it.

But then every order he had ever executed that culminated in the pulling of a trigger, a slash of a blade, the incendiary blast or carefully shaped pressure wave of high explosives...

Garrotes, cyanide, high voltage electrical current to be blamed later on faulty wiring...

His uncleanably bloody bare hands...

...he was among the best in the world at ending the lives of those who opposed the forces he represented but they were all killings. All murder.

The rest was just a matter of degrees. Rationalizations. Justifications.

Technicalities.

He was what he was and he had known it was coming. Earlier he tried to reconcile it with his orders upon first arrival. When Charles Bartowski was a suspected terrorist. Or at least a high risk target. His actual orders had been to bring him in. Had a whole impromptu team assigned to assist with the task.

One that the other half of his current team had cut through like butter.

He was among the best; she _was_ the best.

They had never revisited that early conversation but he was certain of it. She was Langston Graham's Wild Card Enforcer. The lethal ghost of the CIA. Despite working alongside her for nearly a year, "Sarah Walker" only existed on paper. And Sarah Walker had once confided in him that her orders that first night were to kill Charles Bartowski - the man who knew too much - if he ran.

They were what they were: Killers.

Except for Bartowski. And Bartwoski, to Casey's constant surprise, had never run. Except in the wrong damn direction.

But none of that had much to do with why tonight was different.

Casey had known it was coming ever since the early days, when the research team began reassembling the scattered fragments of the Intersect Program. Beckman had been preparing him for it almost since he arrived in Burbank. And still he had felt compelled to argue against it.

It was the closest to insubordination he had ever come.

He entered easily through the unlocked window. It used to anger him that Bartowski kept it unlocked and that Bartowski's oldest friend used it as a second front door. Now even he and Walker used it – though now all he could think was that its most frequent visitor – a man who had been the target's best friend for twenty years and possibly held Bartowski back from bettering himself for just as long – would ordinarily be the next to enter and first to find the body.

Grimes had some gaming marathon to keep him busy and Bartowski had begged off to spend the evening with Walker. Not knowing what he and General Beckman knew: that Graham had recalled her to clear the killing field.

The other Bartowski, the beautiful, kind, loving doctor - and her fellow-doctor fiancé - were on a date of their own, followed by thirty-six hour shifts at the hospital. Casey knew this thanks to his hack of the hospitals systems to keep track of everyone's comings and goings.

Once he did what he did, he and the NSA's cleaners would have plenty of time to clean up and stage an appropriate death for the female doctor's brother. A death that, while tragic and certain to be heartbreaking for her, would be far more palatable than whatever Graham's vindictive mind could dream up.

Casey advanced carefully across the familiar terrain. He had been here numerous times. They had invited him for dinner, opened up their home to him and now he was here to kill one of them. He knew the floor squeaked in front of the bathroom door. Probably an overflow or spill from a previous tenant had warped the wood. Maybe Devon. Ellie was too meticulous for it to have been her. He had noticed it the first time he had dinner there. And yet he was so distracted by his misgivings on this mission he stepped there anyway.

Casey felt no small surge of pride as Bartowski - hearing the squeak of the warped floorboard - at least paused while setting the table as he ducked into the open bathroom door and waited for the sounds from the kitchen to resume. Bartowski had his back turned to him but, of course, had dismissed the sound. He felt safe and secure in his own home. After all, he believed that his NSA handler was watching over him...

When he processed the scene, Casey realized Bartwoski was putting the finishing touches on a dinner he had prepared for himself and Walker and wondered why Walker had left the kid hanging when Graham had recalled her. He once would have assumed pure callousness but now attributed it to cowardice.

Sometimes Casey didn't know who Walker was trying to fool. Bartowski, into thinking they had some sort of future? Simply playing her part in the carrot and stick Casey had once discussed with her?

Or fooling herself, thinking she could have a real life, being what she was, or that Graham would _ever_ let his best killer go.

Casey was having a hard enough time wrestling with this assignment. But he was glad Walker was not coming. That she would not be the one to find the body. There was barely time for a cleaner crew and a staged disappearance even though Casey had already made arrangements for the pickup crew to be on standby.

With Walker's convenient absence - and the other likely complicating persons otherwise conveniently occupied - he hadn't questioned why it had to be done so damn quickly. Just why it had to be done at all.

Not that even an impeccably staged disappearance would save him from Walker.

It wasn't the fact that doing this would eventually mean a throw down of epic proportions between him and her that gave him pause. Graham recalling her was just a reprieve. He'd be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

But even that wasn't what concerned him about her. He had been hunted before.

It was what he suspected Bartowski's death would do to her.

She was the best partner he had ever had. And he wasn't blind.

She wasn't just throwing the kid a bone by agreeing to this first date stuff. She was trying to figure out how she could stay. If she could stay.

Casey wondered why she still hadn't figured out that was never going to happen as he stalked close enough to hear Bartowski practicing a proposal of sorts...

.

* * *

.

Chuck had been honest with Ellie and Devon about what he might like to do and he hoped he wouldn't be alone if he were to do it. He spoke to the empty room to practice his sales pitch.

"So, Sarah. What do you think of um, what do you think of Europe? You. Me. A couple of Eurorail passes? Just seeing the world. Seeing...seeing the world. What the hell? Ask her…"

Chuck smiled to himself at the remote possibility that she might say 'yes'. And then his face fell when it caught his eye. Sarah and Casey had shared a few tricks of their trade and it was one of the first things they had taught him.

Reflective surfaces.

He took a sip of his wine, looked down at the table and refocused on the anomaly in what had until that moment been intended to be Sarah's wine glass. Red wine playing back board and turning the glass into a mirror.

Her intended glass, _his_ reflection. A tiny little John Casey in the curved surface of the glass – reflected upside down and backwards – with a weapon drawn.

Chuck Bartowski looked away from the inverted reflection of his assassin, looked over the last supper he had prepared on the table and inexplicably smiled.

It would have been nice. And maybe he would have had the guts to ask her. To find out once and for all where she stood. After all, she had agreed to tonight. And to a date the night before. He knew he couldn't have her for long but he'd take what he could get.

Now at least he would be spared the heartbreak if she had said 'no'. He wished their second first date last night had gone better. He wondered where they would send her next. He wondered if she would be safe. Of course, she would. She was Sarah. But it didn't stop him from worrying about her.

He looked over the memorabilia in the apartment. Pictured himself backpacking through Europe like he had told Ellie and Devon. Envisioned a picture on the mantle of he and Sarah together in the Swiss Alps. A perfect postcard that would never be. Frozen in time.

It wasn't the worst idea in the world but he doubted Sarah would have agreed to go with him even if things had been different. She was too dedicated to her job. To saving the world. His secret hope was that he might somehow - impossibly - bump into Sarah there while she was off doing... what she did.

Or if she knew where he was maybe... just maybe... she would _decide_ to bump into him.

Chuck hoped she didn't go after Casey.

He was just following orders. Orders that even Chuck knew could come. It was who he was. Chuck really didn't expect anything else of him; he never had.

He just didn't want them to hurt each other. And she couldn't win even if she came out on top. There would be no explanation she could give that their superiors would accept. It would be the end of her and he couldn't bear the thought of him being the cause of any harm befalling her.

Chuck took one last sip of his wine and savored it. One last taste sensation. It was cheap but it was decent. At least his unsophisticated palette thought so.

He focused on the taste, closed his eyes, and waited to see if Casey kept his promise.

.

* * *

.

Casey watched Bartowski's hands ball into fists but with his knuckles resting on the edge of the table. His target's shoulders tensed and his arms trembled a bit but he didn't move. Bartowski involuntarily inhaled a deep breath and sighed it out. He knew who - or what - was behind him.

But he didn't run. Didn't flinch. There wasn't much of whatever the stuff was that this kid was made of left in the world and he was here to snuff it out.

"Huevos grandes", Mr. Colt had said when Bartowksi had saved both he and Walker's asses today. The merc wasn't wrong. And Casey had made a pact with Bartowski months ago when the kid had almost casually laid out the possibilities. Even though their talk was more about being irrecoverably taken, Bartowski had foreseen this. Just like that fucking Chinese spook with her ghost stories.

Bartowski's request was simple: He wanted his executioner to look him in the eye... as long as Walker wasn't involved.

The kid had to at least be relieved that she wasn't.

Bartowski hadn't actually verbalized or characterized it this way but what Casey had heard him say was that he wanted to die with honor.

Casey was trying to find the words. He could just cough or sigh instead. But he decided he had to say something.

He had promised.

Casey remembered when Bartowski had left copies of the 'Die Hard' movies in Casey's locker to synchronize up with the surveillance. A strange invitation for the man hiding behind headphones and cameras. Something that had become a bit of a habit whenever he had been unable to conceal his cluelessness in one of the many pop-culture reference laden conversations at the Buy More but often coordinated so he could be included in movie nights. If from a distance.

The note on top of the three DVDs had said: _'Trust me, you'll love them.'_

He had.

Casey even thought that a _'Yippie kay yay, motherfucker'_ would probably get a laugh out of Bartowski even in this grim scenario. But even Casey's sense of humor wasn't that dark. He didn't have Bartowski's quick wit and even if he did he was sure it would fail him now.

The best he could come up with was: _'Chuck, turn around.'_

Or even: _'Chuck, it's time.'_

But he couldn't make the words leave his mouth.

They stood like that for over a minute, Casey not knowing that Chuck had closed his eyes waiting for the inevitable. When Chuck hadn't moved for several seconds Casey was almost positive that Chuck knew he was behind him. Now that the silence and stillness continued interminably, he was absolutely certain of it.

It had seemed such a simple promise, especially for a killer like him.

'I want you to look me in the eye when you do it.'

The kid had served honorably and bravely and now stood proudly - expendable and obsolete - waiting to die. He never did give the kid enough credit for how strong he really was.

Ultimately, the four words that Major John Casey, unrepentant problem-solver of the United States' government on six continents for nearly two decades, came closest to saying out loud were:

_'Fuck it, I'm done.'_

And he backed slowly away.

.

* * *

.

The doorbell rang and Chuck's eyelids flew open. He didn't know how long he had been standing like that or even if one life had been snuffed out and this was the start of some second (or subsequent) existence. One hand moved to the back of his head and the other to his chest, patting and searching for a bullet wound that was not there before looking to the floor to see if he saw his crumpled body lying there separate from his consciousness.

When no blood appeared on his hands or the front of his shirt and no corpse appeared at his feet, Chuck looked down at the wine glass that had first alerted him to Casey's presence and did not see tiny Casey reflected there. He turned abruptly on the spot and found no one behind him in the empty hallway. He wondered if his mind had been playing tricks on him as the doorbell rang again and he moved uncertainly toward the door.

"Hey, Sarah," Chuck said simply after opening the door, soaking her in, having thought moments before that he would never see her again.

"Chuck..." she started without a greeting of her own and with an uncharacteristic tremble in her voice. He had gotten pretty good at reading her but she wasn't even trying to hide that something was wrong.

"What is it?" he asked.

"We have to call off the date," she replied. "The Intersect was destroyed."

"What?" Chuck asked, more from shock than disbelief.

And from confusion at the order in which the two pieces of information were delivered. Shouldn't the CIA Agent lead with the operational aspect? Was he reading too much into the fact that she mentioned the date first? He was also puzzled by another sequence of events...

If the Intersect had already been destroyed Casey wouldn't have been sent. They must have been pretty sure it would work to send him - Chuck had assumed it had been successful - which meant Casey didn't know.

Casey's retreat wasn't because the situation had changed. He simply couldn't do it. Chuck thought he had been getting better at sizing up situations in the spy world.

This was… unexpected.

Sarah misunderstood at least the full depth of his confusion and explained, "The Cipher – it was a Trojan horse, a sabotage device. The moment it came on line, it exploded."

"But that means…"

"You're still the only Intersect."

That wasn't what he was going to say. He was going to say 'Nothing has changed. We can't be together.'

But then he realized that was exactly what she HAD said.

Just in her connect-the-dots way that he had managed to become moderately proficient at deciphering.

"I'm sorry," she said with that same almost-questioning tremble in her voice.

Now _that_ tone he knew. Sincere Sarah. She was sorry. And - he dared to hope - not just that he wasn't free of the Intersect but for everything else that wouldn't happen tonight. Or ever, it seemed. Whatever that may have been. Whatever _they_ may have been.

She lowered her head and turned to leave but he called out, "Sarah, wait."

She raised her eyes and turned half way back toward him but stopped mid-turn. Chuck could tell she saw something off to the side of the apartment that had stopped her from turning completely and fought the urge to peek around the doorjamb at what she was seeing.

Casey had not anticipated Walker turning to leave almost immediately and had just stepped back out through the window. When he did so he saw Walker at the front door to the apartment staring right back at him.

Had he gone through with his mission he had almost hoped she would find him there over Chuck's body. He hadn't planned on fighting back if he could overcome the conditioned reflex of it and didn't expect to leave alive. And from the look on her face, chances were looking pretty slim now.

Again – he wasn't blind.

It was the white bandage on his cheek over the wound from Mr. Colt's ring that gave him away. She was more upset than she was letting on with Chuck about having to suppress her emotions - her ill-defined feelings for the man she was supposed to be protecting - yet again, and probably wouldn't have noticed Casey if not for that flash of white.

She just stared at him and her jaw tightened.

Chuck could guess what she saw. He had learned that not everything had to be seen to know it was there and he took it as confirmation that tiny Casey hadn't been a figment of his imagination. But this night had already been hard enough for all involved - he assumed - and he didn't like the murderous look on Sarah's face.

"Have you eaten?"

She whipped her head around to look at him. "What? Umm…no…of course not, I was coming here to…"

Chuck just smiled. He loved catching her off guard. It seemed he was the only one who could and he took some small pride in that.

"Come inside. A girl's gotta eat. You'll hurt my feelings if you don't at least try my cooking. Our third first date."

"Chuuuuuuck." He also loved the way she dragged it out and clicked her tongue over the 'K' like that. It was adorable. "We can't. This isn't real. It can't... If I'm going to stay, it can't _go_... anywhere…"

"So, pretty much just like our first first date. C'mon. Maybe one day we'll get it right."

God, how she hoped so but she felt pretty hopeless at the moment. All her animal instincts were telling her to run away, or to go beat Casey to death just to have an outlet for the electric adrenaline coursing through her body. But Chuck's hand gently circled her wrist and rather than her combative instincts kicking in she felt that familiar relaxing warmth threatening to fill her up.

She glanced back at the courtyard and saw Casey nod at her before she allowed Chuck to guide her into the apartment before the word had left her lips.

"Okay." she said after she was already inside. Her head was reeling and her mind, body and definitely her heart were not acting in concert.

Chuck led her to her usual seat facing the kitchen, food and wine already in place but she stood and watched him sort out the last few additions to the table. He knew she hated this seat. It left two entries out of her direct line of sight. But Ellie, as hostess preferred the seat nearer the kitchen for smaller gatherings. The head of the table near the patio for larger groups. And, somehow, this tactically disadvantageous seat had become "hers". And she wasn't supposed to be a spy tonight.

As he passed the head of the table, he moved his plate from the head of the table to the seat directly across from her. He had wanted to sit near enough to touch her. Or near enough that she could touch him if she chose. He had seen her walls go up and knew that wouldn't happen but that wasn't why he changed seats. He just desperately wanted to look at her and it was a better vantage point.

"This looks amazing, Chuck," she said looking down at the dinner he had prepared for them. Her voice dripping with regrets.

He looked back at her as she looked up through her eyelashes at him with a quirk of a sad smile bending one corner of her mouth. He just looked back at her in silence and his mind, synapses firing indiscriminately, conjured up a line from Sin City when they had watched it together with Ellie, Devon, and Morgan recently. He knew that she didn't generally like to watch gory movies but she had gleefully noted how perfect it was to watch a movie with him that felt like watching a comic book.

And, as she cuddled into his chest and he knew what was meant by "she smells like angels ought to smell" when he pressed his chin and a ghost of a kiss into her hair, he remembered thinking that she really couldn't possibly be any more perfect.

That, of the comic book women in the movie, she was more than Goldie - the supposed perfect woman, and Nancy - just a glimmer of the child inside he would give anything to protect grown into a beautiful woman, and Gail - the avenging Valkyrie, and even deadly little Miho... all rolled into one.

Something not of this earth. And therefore something impossible to hold on to.

The line he remembered so distinctly was cheesy, as many lines from that movie were, but it had aptly described her then. And even more so now:

_"My warrior woman. My Valkyrie. You'll always be mine..."_

.

_"Always... and never."_

.

* * *

.

Casey had reached his apartment and turned on the surveillance equipment he had shut down prior to his aborted mission, heard the clink of silverware and wine glasses and the dinner conversation about anything but what had almost happened tonight.

"I meant to tell you," Casey heard Sarah say as she finally broke their gaze and took her seat, "that lost agent you were looking for? That latest lead you gave us?"

"Yeah…"

"They found him. Not in great shape but alive. He owes his life to you, Chuck."

"That's- That's good… Right?"

"Very good," Sarah said looking at him admiringly. How could someone so good and kind also be so humble about it?

For the second time today she recalled the words of the Chinese spy whose brother Chuck had insisted on saving:

_"He is a great man. Or will be. Greater than you yet know... But you must keep him safe."_

Chuck looked at her looking at him, puzzled a bit by what he saw in her look. As he took his own seat, he had a sudden thought about what might have happened if it were somehow Sarah in that situation and there wasn't someone like him able to leverage the Intersect to help her. The thought took another form and slipped out without his permission as he muttered, "Maybe I'm not done."

Sarah looked up at him questioningly and he tried to clarify.

"I want my life to be mine again but… If there's no other options for the Intersect... If I can help people... Maybe I'm just not done yet."

Sarah marveled at him but held her true thoughts back. About a blank slip of paper inside a fortune cookie. About a future unwritten. About Mei Ling's warning... And the burden of denying ourselves for something more important than our own lives. Or our own happiness.

"You're taking this pretty well." She asked without actually speaking a question as she daintily laid her napkin in her lap.

The thought that such a formidable woman could be dainty amused him. Placing a napkin in her lap was a tiny gesture really. But it was another thing Chuck had planned on doing for her tonight and would have done even in light of the bad news she had brought with her had he been able to cope with the idea of being that close to her and not touching her.

"Well…" and he took a sip of his wine, "first of all, despite the non-date nature of this third first date let me say something I should have said when I opened the door..."

He returned his wine glass to the table, placed his hands to either side of his plate and stared directly into her beautiful cerulean eyes and sole her heart with the sincerity of just his first two words: "You're beautiful. I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner."

Finally, she relaxed a bit and smiled at him. "How much of that wine have you already had?"

"This wine?" and he pointed at the bottle on the table. "Just a few sips. The two bottles in the trash can on the other hand…"

She laughed and he hid how much it hurt his heart.

"I'm sorry you're still stuck here," Chuck offered, "but I honestly can't decide which is worse. Date you for real but only for one week. Or date you indefinitely but not for real."

She hid her disappointment even more effectively. She certainly didn't consider herself 'stuck' here. Of all the frustrating things about this job seeing him every day was only frustrating because of the limits she had to impose on her behavior. It was infinitely better than _not_ seeing him every day. And, oh, if they had only had even that one week.

She thought briefly of the small overnight bag in her car. She had every intention of following the 'three date rule' that Carina had once told her about even if the first two had ended in bedlam. A red nighty even skimpier than the purple one he had already seen several months ago would wait there, unworn and unseen. She had bought it yesterday before their second first date. She had every intention of adopting a two date rule last night.

He turned more serious and answered her earlier non-question. "It's disappointing, sure. Especially the fact that you and I are just two colleagues eating near each other. But I know how important I am to the government."

That he managed that last bit with a straight face was a minor miracle but he was encouraged by what Casey had not done this evening.

"And I got a bit of good news today," he said cryptically while mentally on the subject of Casey. "I wish I could tell you about it but it's really somebody else's secret. Can I just promise that one day I will tell you?"

He looked her in the eye and she stared back until he was sure she had caught all of the subtext and she was sure that he knew that she had. He was sure Casey was listening in by now and he would never address the issue any more directly than he just had. He didn't know if Casey realized that he had been aware of Casey's presence but he hadn't felt the need to withhold any information to try to gain any advantage. He needed friends around him more than he ever realized.

Now each knew where the others stood. And Chuck now knew something about Casey he had previously only hoped.

"So what do you think of the chicken? Ellie didn't seem very impressed. Maybe I'll do better next time."

He looked up at her and she almost cracked. She could see in his eyes how hard he was trying to keep things light despite his massive disappointment that his ticket out of the spy world had been his death certificate and that this date was no more 'real' than the dozens of others that had preceded it.

In which order of importance, she had no idea.

She selfishly hoped he was, like her, more disappointed in the latter but said nothing of the sort. Instead she took a bite of her chicken. "It's lovely. Everything is lovely. Thank you for everything you've done for me."

She hoped he realized she wasn't talking about the chicken.

.

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
